


The City Will Follow You

by wrongfun (scumtrout)



Series: Hinterland [2]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Gen, Possession, Redemption, Sharing a Body
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2016-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 21:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 109,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1048573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scumtrout/pseuds/wrongfun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Noatak’s still alive, and a lot of people would like to correct this oversight. However, there are those who would give him a second chance. AU, taking place after the end of S1. Sequel to Precedent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Summer, ASC 171

_Summer, ASC 171_  
  
It's a beautiful day - the sky is vast and blank, the sort of blue that hurts your eyes, and there isn't a breath of wind - and Tarrlok is under arrest.  
  
Behind Tarrlok is the Avatar, just a few paces back. Behind the Avatar is the temple where Tarrlok been living for the past few months. Ahead is a dirt path and a shabby wooden gate, carved with animals and hunting figures beneath a crescent moon. Tarrlok did offer to repaint the gate just the other day, but... Well, now he has more pressing concerns.  
  
Beyond the gate is a road where Beifong waits, presumably with a vehicle to take Tarrlok back to the city.  
  
It's such nice weather, though.  
  
“Good journey here?” Tarrlok asks Korra.  
  
He's been aware of her eyes on the back of his neck the whole time, and he swears that he can feel her blink. “Huh? I guess,” she says.  
  
Tarrlok nods, and takes the time to study the carvings on the gate as they pass through it. He probably won't be seeing it again for quite a while.  
  
\--  
  
The fact that Tarrlok is under arrest doesn't bother him so much. You break the law, you get arrested. That's the way the world is meant to work.  
  
What bothers him is this:  
  
Why is the Avatar arresting him by herself? How is Korra sure that he no longer poses a threat? Perhaps he should just ask, though it seems a bit gauche.  
  
“Is it really just you and Beifong here?” he says.  
  
“Yeah. Why?”  
  
Tarrlok looks down at his feet. The road is very close now. The path is coming to an end. He wants to count the stones beneath his boots.  
  
“What if I'd tried to fight you?” he asks.  
  
“That'd be pretty stupid,” Korra says.  
  
“What if I'd managed to get my bending back after leaving Republic City?”  
  
He imagines that Korra narrows her eyes. “Attacking me would still be pretty stupid.”  
  
“Well, people do stupid things all the time, I'm afraid.”  
  
There's a small pause. “I think you've done enough dumb stuff already,” Korra says.  
  
Tarrlok smiles to himself, and looks up.  
  
\--  
  
The road is just a larger dirt track that cuts through rolling green fields. The only sound is the chirp of the crickets in the grass; it's the sort of noise that could get inside your head and drive you mad, if you let it.  
  
Beifong is waiting by a Satomobile, arms crossed, leaning against one of the front wheels. She looks a little bored, although her demeanour is still watchful. It's _funny_ , Tarrlok wants to tell her, _you'd expect the arrest of a bloodbender to be a bit more exiting than this_. Beifong opens the Satomobile's passenger door and gestures inside.  
  
Tarrlok almost says 'thank you', but Beifong has never had much of a sense of humor. He ducks into the vehicle. She slams the door hard enough to make the frame shake.  
  
Korra takes the back seat. Tarrlok resists watching her in the rear-view mirror, quite sure that she's already watching him.  
  
–  
  
Beifong drives through unfamiliar countryside. Every so often, they pass through a town – they all look the same after a while - and Tarrlok watches the buildings rush by. He doesn't think of anything in particular. The Satomobile becomes its own little world, airless and warm.  
  
No one speaks, though there's the occasional creak of seat springs as Korra fidgets.  
  
Tarrlok's curiosity eventually gets the better of him, and he turns around and to look back at the girl. She has what looks like a piece of clay in her hands.  
  
She pokes and prods the clay into different shapes. It would appear that she's making a tiny sculpture of a frog. A frog that looks as if it's been kicked in the face a few times, but a frog nonetheless.  
  
Korra must know he's staring, but doesn't glance up. "What?"  
  
"How much further is it?" Tarrlok says.  
  
"Not much. Why, you need a break or something?"  
  
"I'm fine. Just..."  
  
"Worried?"  
  
"Tired."  
  
"We're going to stop overnight at a house near Fort Pixiu," Korra says.  
  
Wait. Where's Fort Pixiu? Has Tarrlok heard of it before? "Oh. _Now_ you tell me. I thought we were heading straight back to the City."  
  
Korra now looks up and stares back at him. "Uh. Yeah. But the city is still another day's journey away."  
  
They both peer at each other.  
  
"You know where you are, right?" Korra asks.  
  
"Well, I... Actually, no."  
  
"How did you end up this far west?"  
  
"I suppose I just followed Noatak. Amon. You know. Him."  
  
Korra squints at him. "You never once looked at a map?"  
  
"Why would I? I had no intention of going anywhere."  
  
Korra stares for a moment, then shrugs as if to say 'fair enough'. She asks, "What have you been doing for the past few months?"  
  
"Not very much."  
  
“Huh,” says Korra.  
  
"Pardon my asking, but why are you making a frog?" Tarrlok asks, just to steer the conversation away from himself.  
  
Korra holds up the tiny sculpture. "If you get the trick right, you can make it hop. Want to see?"  
  
"Not particularly," Tarrlok says. How old is she meant to be?  
  
"Suit yourself," Korra mutters.  
  
Beifong just keeps her eyes on the road.  
  
–  
  
The roads get rougher until, around sunset, they head down a path that cuts through a forest, eventually reaching a small clearing. A siheyuan is huddled in the center of it. The building isn't too different from the temple Tarrlok recently left.  
  
This must be the place near Fort Pixiu. Tarrlok racks his brain trying to recall some information about the area, but draws a blank. Fort Pixiu might just be one of those grubby little garrisons that the United Forces keep out in the middle of nowhere for training purposes. Or it might be something else. Tarrlok could wonder about it, but it's probably for the best if he doesn't indulge his paranoia.  
  
Beifong parks the Satomobile by the siheyuan's gate, then points Tarrlok towards the main house. Her silence isn't particularly reassuring.  
  
He continues onwards, with Beifong and Korra at his back, and does his best to ignore the familiar headache that's currently trying to burrow its way through his right eyebrow.  
  
The siheyuan is clean and well-maintained, tastefully modest. The interior courtyard contains a patch of grass and two peach trees. The trees both look like the ideal of what a peach tree should be: their trunks slope artfully, and their branches have an elegant, sculpted quality. They're like oversized bonsai.  
  
Tarrlok pauses before main house's open doorway. Korra nearly walks into his back. She mutters something that he doesn't quite catch.  
  
Tarrlok can't see anything inside the house except a well-lit foyer with yellow walls. He steps into it. It turns out that, just to the side of the doorway, the foyer contains a few chairs, a wall hanging of a mountainside, and a a rickety little table. Sitting by the table is Grand Lotus Katara.  
  
Ah. Wonderful.  
  
The old woman is perched on a stool with her cane on her lap. She raises her eyebrows a little when Tarrlok comes into view.  
  
Tarrlok has encountered Katara a few times before, albeit briefly. The last time they met was almost a year ago, at the grand opening of a hospital; there was a lot of smiling and bowing involved. Now, he hesitates in the doorway, unsure if he's still capable of being polite.  
  
Katara. Of all people.  
  
"Oh, there you are," Katara says. "Does anyone want tea?"  
  
Before Tarrlok can say something stupid, Beifong answers for the three of them. "We're good."  
  
Katara graciously smiles at them all. "Please sit down."  
  
Tarrlok automatically does so. He picks a chair opposite Katara and does his best to sit bolt upright. Then he waits for an explanation as to why he's here. Lin remains standing, looming over his right shoulder.  
  
Katara looks right at him. "You're sure you don't want tea? Is there anything else you'd like? Are you hungry?"  
  
"I'm fine," Tarrlok replies, forcing himself to add, "Thank you."  
  
"You're sure? I made some muqpauraq."  
  
"Quite sure. Thank you."  
  
"Well, you've had a long journey. Would you like a chance to rest? "  
  
"No. Thank you," Tarrlok says, already starting to sound strained. Korra, meanwhile, sidles off to lean against a wall and pick at her fingernails. She could've warned him about the Grand Lotus, but no.  
  
Katara keeps smiling, and keeps her attention on him. "Very well. So, I take it that you're sufficiently sound of mind to explain why you attacked the Avatar, tried to kidnap her - and she's a teenage girl, I might add, although I'm quite sure _that_ didn't escape your notice - and then violently assaulted a group of people that included the entire Republic City Council and two senior police officers?"  
  
A straightforward appeal to his guilt. Not a bad opening, all things considered.  
  
Tarrlok's headache kicks up a notch. He becomes very aware of Lin's presence beside him.  
  
Katara still watches him with glacial patience, leaving many things unsaid.  
  
"I don't know how to answer you,” Tarrlok says.  
  
"Try."  
  
"Anything I say will sound like an excuse."  
  
"Say it anyway," Katara replies.  
  
"I can't give a rational explanation because I'm not - wasn't - a rational person." Rational people do not sabotage their career by starting fights with teenagers. Of course, he's not very keen on using the insanity defense - if he has to choose between prison and the loony bin, he'd prefer the former, because prison means a nice fixed sentence and the prospect of being perceived as 'evil' rather than 'incompetent' - but it's not up to him anymore, is it?  
  
Katara studies him as if he's something she's just scraped off her shoe. "Do you consider yourself to be a danger to others?"  
  
Even after all that's happened, Tarrlok still wants to say, _no, absolutely not, that's absurd, I'm the elected representative of the Northern Water Tribe, what do you take me for_? But instead, he replies, "The record doesn't look too good, does it?"  
  
"What happened to your hand?" Katara asks, without looking away from his face.  
  
Tarrlok doesn't over-think his reply. "Incident involving a shock glove and a fuel tank."  
  
Beifong shifts her weight from one foot to the other, nothing more. Korra stares quite shamelessly, as if Tarrlok is a very interesting traffic accident.  
  
"And how did this incident occur?" Katara says.  
  
Does he really have to talk about this right now? He'd rather discuss the attempted kidnapping. Besides, he's not sure if he's capable of giving the whole story anyway.  
  
"Noatak thought he could make a run for it and start over. I disagreed," he answers. He doesn't care if he sounds glib. There are worse things to be than glib.  
  
"I need more information than that," Katara says.  
  
"I'd give you the sordid details if I could remember them." Tarrlok manages to hold Katara's gaze, although it's not _him_ that's doing it, just his body, while his real self sits at the back of his mind and waits for all of this to pass. "I don't remember much after leaving Air Temple Island."  
  
That's a half-truth, and Katara gives no indication of accepting it. "And how did you end up at a temple a hundred miles west of the city?"  
  
"Noatak left me there. I didn't have a lot of say in the matter."  
  
Katara lets out a little sigh of exasperation. "You're not helping your case by being evasive."  
  
"I wasn't aware that I had a case. It's a minimum sentence of eight years just for bloodbending, correct? And that's without taking other charges into account."  
  
"Describe what happened after Korra left you in the cell on Air Temple Island," Katara says, as if she hasn't heard him.  
  
_No,_ Tarrlok wants to say, _I can't be bothered_. The foyer is too small and cramped with four people in it, and the smell of the peach trees in blossom is nauseatingly sickly. Still, he has to tell the truth, because anything else would feel like another defeat.  
  
He replies, "I'll tell you what I can. There were several boats moored at the dock on the north side of the island. I assume the Equalists had left them there. Anyway, we – well, Noatak – took one of those. I don't know how long we travelled for, and I can't remember what we said to each other, if anything. At some point, while his back was turned, I must've taken a shock glove and ignited the boat's fuel tank." There. That wasn't so difficult after all. He even managed to say all of that without crying or throwing up! Well done, Tarrlok, you're not a complete waste of skin!  
  
"You intended to kill him?" Katara asks.  
  
"What do you think?"  
  
Katara repeats herself, slowly: "You intended to kill him?"  
  
Tarrlok just shrugs. Strangely, he has to suppress a smile. "You haven't caught him yet, have you? People can't be very happy about that."  
  
Behind him, Korra shifts her weight from one foot to the other, crossing her arms.  
  
"How far out to sea were you when it happened?" Katara asks.  
  
Ah. Now. See. If Tarrlok hadn't been raised to have such good manners, _this_ would be the point where he'd tell Katara to fuck off.  
  
"I don't know. Far enough that I couldn't see land," he says. "Look, what do you want from me?"  
  
"I think you might be able to provide some insight into things. However, I need complete honesty from you. You're already on thin ice as it is."  
  
"Insight into what kind of things?" Tarrlok asks. He casts a sidelong glance at Beifong; she's watching him carefully.  
  
Katara ignores his question again. "So, how did you survive?"  
  
"I'm not sure. The next thing I can remember is walking by a river." Another half-truth. He remembers more, but most of it is irrelevant and (especially) unhelpful: the smell of burned skin and spilled fuel, the onshore breeze, Noatak's voice as he tried to apologize. "Then we ended up at some village, and walked from there to a place called... Well, I can't remember the name, but we stayed there overnight, and then we kept walking west. We were some way past the temple when Noatak decided that he'd rather be alone, and he left me there."  
  
"Why didn't you inform the authorities of his presence in the area?" says Katara.  
  
What a good question.  
  
"Because they're generally useless," Tarrlok answers, although that still sounds like a cop out.  
  
Katara actually blinks at him, just once, very slowly. "So you chose to hide from the police, and let a wanted criminal walk free."  
  
Tarrlok just stares at her. He almost expects himself to stand up, kick his chair back, and start shouting at her, all flying spittle and righteous indignation. Very dramatic, and completely ridiculous. But instead, he finds himself frozen in place.  
  
"I tried to stop him," he says. It's so good how he almost makes it sound noble.  
  
He wants Katara to say something that'll push him over the edge and give him an excuse to start screaming at her, but she just sits back and studies him.  
  
"That's all I need to know for the time being," Katara says. "Thank you. Korra, can you escort Tarrlok to his quarters, please?"  
  
And now she's dismissing him. How anticlimactic.  
  
Korra takes a step forward, looking a little uncomfortable. As she should.  
  
"So, uh," Korra says, and walks out to the courtyard again.  
  
Tarrlok follows after her.  
  
Beifong makes a 'hmph' noise while he's still in earshot.  
  
\--  
  
Korra leads him to the west building, which contains a bedroom. There's a bed and chamber pot, a desk, a bookcase, and another wall hanging with some incomprehensible Air Nomad poetry on it.  
  
Tarrlok takes a few steps inside, while Korra remains in the doorway, blocking it.  
  
"If you'd told me the Grand Lotus would be here, I would've worn a clean shirt," Tarrlok tells her. He knows he's sulking, but he doesn't care.  
  
"Sorry," Korra says, without sounding too apologetic. Was she ordered to keep quiet about Katara's involvement in order to catch him off-guard? If so, it worked.  
  
Tarrlok wanders over to the wall scroll and studies the calligraphy. The poem is the usual nonsense about flowers and seasons, and the characters look a bit florid for Tarrlok's taste. "Why is Katara so interested in me, anyway?" he asks, although he can guess the answer.  
  
"Bloodbenders are kinda her thing," Korra replies, then pauses as if she regrets phrasing it that way. "...I guess."  
  
"I'm surprised she didn't tell you how to defend yourself against them," Tarrlok says, while still inspecting the wall hanging. "It's not as if the Avatar hasn't been attacked by a bloodbender before."  
  
Korra pauses. Perhaps she's giving him a sideways look. As if she hasn't heard his comment, she asks, "Did you really try to kill Amon?"  
  
The girl has clearly spent too much time around her Sifu.  
  
Tarrlok keeps his back straight and his voice neutral. "Yes. You'd like to hear the gory details too, then?"  
  
"People are going to ask questions. Standard, uh, procedure."  
  
"I know," Tarrlok replies, then makes a weak attempt at explaining himself: "I'm just..." What? 'I'm already fed up, and things are only going to go downhill from here'? Yes, go on, Tarrlok, wallow in self-pity. You'd probably enjoy it. "It's not a topic I'm looking forward to discussing. Sorry."  
  
He can't pretend to study the wall hanging forever, so he goes to sit down on the bed. Still in need of a convenient distraction, he examines the nails on his good hand. They are, quite frankly, disgusting.  
  
Korra takes a slight step forward.  
  
Tarrlok keeps inspecting his nails, and waits for her to speak.  
  
Out the edge of his vision, he sees Korra tug at her arm band, then looks back at the doorway, then back to him again. Finally, and with what might be a great amount of effort, she says, "I'm really sorry I didn't stop him."  
  
Tarrlok's first thought is to dismiss the apology. Withholding forgiveness is the only power he has left. But he's aware that he's acting like a petulant teenager, and it's a small wonder that Korra is willing to talk to him at all.  
  
"What?" Korra asks peevishly, and Tarrlok realizes that he's now staring at her.  
  
"It's nothing," he says. "I mean, it's alright. Thank you. None of this is your fault, though."  
  
Korra resumes tugging at her arm band, and glances down at her boots. "So, uh, I'm going to go talk to Katara..."  
  
"Well, I won't complain if my ears burn-"  
  
Korra scowls a little. "I'll be back in a bit. You can leave this room but you can't go past the outer courtyard."  
  
"I understand." Tarrlok could ask what might happen if he ventured out of bounds, but the question would give the impression that he actually _wants_ to escape. "I won't be going anywhere."  
  
"Okay. Fine. Later." Korra takes a deep breath, then steps out, closing the door behind her.  
  
_Silly girl_ , Tarrlok tells himself, though his heart isn't in it.  
  
He busies himself with making a survey of the room.  
  
The bookcase draws his attention, so he gets up to skim over it. Most of the books seem to relate to naval warfare in some way, though there are a few dusty scrolls on mathematics. Not very interesting.  
  
He chooses a transcription of Northern military history, though the content of the book doesn't particularly matter. It's unlikely that he'll remember any of it anyway. The book is just a place where he can put his mind.  
  
It's going to be a long night.  
  
\--  
  
The next day, after he manages to drag himself out of bed, he ventures out into the courtyard and explores. He expects Beifong to be waiting for him somewhere, but she's nowhere in sight. He remains on guard.  
  
He finds a kitchen in the southernmost building; it contains a water pump, so he washes his face to wake himself up. (Though he did manage to get some sleep. He's not sure what that says about him.) The water still feels very strange - it's lighter, less real, less tangible - but he goes through his usual mantra of ''I'll get used to it eventually'.  
  
While he dries his face on his sleeve, he hears the tap-tap-tap of Katara's cane crossing the flagstones. She steps into the kitchen; she's just a blue shape at the edge of his vision.  
  
_As you can see_ , he wants to tell her, _I didn't try to run away during the night. Bully for me_.  
  
Katara goes to a cupboard. From the sound of it, she's taking out some bowls. "I'm having mackerel pike for lunch, so-"  
  
Tarrlok cuts her off. "Why do I have your special attention?"  
  
There's another pause. Katara puts the bowls in a stack. "I'm sorry we never found your father," she says.  
  
Now Tarrlok has heard two apologies in as many days. It's a little disconcerting, and probably manipulative on Katara's part. "What? Oh. That's not really an issue. He's been dead for over twenty years."  
  
Katara turns to face him. Tarrlok gets the nasty feeling that she's studying him again, so he stands up and leans against the water pump, trying to look nonchalant, and adds, "And, of course, if you'd found him before he'd met my mother, I wouldn't even be alive to sulk about everything. I've always wondered, though: how much effort _did_ you put into the search? Did you see him as a low priority because he'd lost his bending and therefore didn't pose so much of a threat?"  
  
And now he's babbling. This is going well.  
  
Katara leaves the bowls on a table and takes a seat on a nearby stool. "We put a lot of time and resources into finding him. However, mistakes were made. Did you ever read the case files?"  
  
"I did." It was risky and stupid thing to do, but inevitable. "I've never put much stock in reports, though. They're only as honest as the person who wrote them."  
  
"Well, then, there's no point quibbling over the details," Katara says. "No matter what was done, your father still escaped, and we failed to catch him."  
  
"So you're now being nice to me out of guilt?" Tarrlok says, and realizes that he's smiling again. "Or... what? What do you want from me?"  
  
Katara looks thoughtful. "Guilt is a factor. I owed you that apology. But my personal feelings are irrelevant. My main concern is finding your brother."  
  
Tarrlok expected as much. "I'll help you if I can, but I have to say that I'd feel much more at ease if this conversation was taking place in a police station. What you're doing right now could be construed as an abuse of authority and, legally, I'm not obligated to tell you anything." He's aware that he sounds like a complete ass, but he's never been very comfortable with the White Lotus's habit of meddling in things.  
  
"That's true." Katara regards him patiently. She seems much less prickly than yesterday. "Korra doesn't want you in prison, though, and I can see where she's coming from. She's the one who insisted that I talk to you. She's also refusing to press charges for the kidnapping incident."  
  
“She... what?”  
  
"Oh, she's partly motivated by political expedience," Katara adds. "She doesn't want it on record that you beat her in a fight and took her as hostage. She thinks it reflects badly on her. Not good for PR. Of course, you wouldn't believe the number of times Aang was captured or kidnapped - you could say that it's an occupational hazard - but the girl won't hear it."  
  
Tarrlok mulls over this information. He doesn't find it reassuring. The prospect of prison always had a nice finality.  
  
Katara continues, "However, there's still the fact that you bloodbent people while resisting arrest. Korra has... made efforts to discourage people from pressing charges, but she doesn't get the final say in the matter. You're quite a point of contention."  
  
"I, ah..." Tarrlok falters. "I always intended to plead guilty anyway."  
  
"Then why didn't you go straight to the police after Noatak left you?" Katara asks, and Tarrlok wants to wince.  
  
"I intended to. Eventually. I just wanted a bit of a reprieve. Put it down to cowardice." Not a good answer.  
  
Katara just nods, and sits back slightly. "So, are you willing to answer some of my questions about Noatak, or would you prefer to only deal with Chief Beifong?"  
  
Well, silly as it sounds, Tarrlok still finds Katara relatively more tolerable. He might not trust the White Lotus, but it's not like he has much to lose.  
  
Still, he can't resist asking, "Korra said that Beifong was in charge of the investigation. Does the Chief mind that you've effectively commandeered one of her key witnesses?"  
  
Katara smiles. _Don't be a cheeky little shit,_ her eyes tell him. "We're all working together for the common good, Tarrlok."  
  
"Very well," Tarrlok says. "I'll answer your questions. But first you'll have to tell me what you'll do with Noatak when you find him."  
  
"If he's taken alive, he'll go to trial like anyone else."  
  
"Korra will take his bending, won't she?"  
  
"If that's the most practical option, yes."  
  
"I think he'd rather choose death over imprisonment, to be honest."  
  
Katara raises her eyebrows. "Did he tell you this?"  
  
"In so many words."  
  
"What did you two discuss while you were together?"  
  
"I remember telling him that he was being an idiot, or something along those lines. Unsurprisingly, he had no interest in giving himself up to the police." Tarrlok studies a crack in the flagstones by his left foot. "I'm not sure what I expected. He has nothing to gain by surrendering."  
  
" _You_ surrendered."  
  
"I had less to lose. Fewer illusions," Tarrlok says. "Anyway, he made it quite clear that he'd rather die than return to Republic City."  
  
Katara sneaks a quick glance at Tarrlok's bad hand. " _When_ did he tell you that he'd rather die?"  
  
"Some time after we reached the coast."  
  
"Oh." Katara now frowns. "Let's go back a step. What did you two discuss _before_ you tried to destroy the boat?"  
  
Tarrlok has to pause and think about that. "Very little."  
  
Katara takes a deep breath, and asks, "So what made you decide to kill him?"  
  
She has to ask. He'd ask the same, if he was in her position. Even so, Tarrlok still considers ending the conversation and leaving the room.  
  
Tarrlok opens his mouth to speak and lets the words sort themselves out:  
  
"Alright. After I realized who he was, there was a short period where I thought, 'This is it. You've got him back. Everything else is mess, but at least he's alive.' His mannerisms are different, but he's aged well - he looks very similar to how I remember him, you know? Same eyes. He asked me to follow him, and I did. Anyway, while we were heading towards the docks, I stopped and looked back at the city, at the smoke from the buildings - and Noatak just kept walking. He didn't look back. Not once. And it would've been very easy for me to do the same: keep walking, forget everyone else, move on. I understood that I was capable of doing that. I understood that I was capable of lots of things, and so was he. And, I don't know, I suppose that was it."  
  
Then he pauses, and adds, "However, it turns out that it's very difficult to kill a waterbender while they're surrounded by, well, _water_. Who would have guessed?"  
  
Katara sighs and gives him a 'what are we going to do with you?' sort of look. "And it was after you reached land that he told you he'd rather die than surrender to the police?"  
  
"Yes. I suppose." Now she's making him doubt his own memories. Tarrlok wants to hate her for it, but his confusion is his own fault.  
  
"What did you say to him?" Katara asks.  
  
Might as well be honest. "I told him that if he surrendered without a fight, he could use his knowledge as a bargaining chip. I know it was a weak argument, but it was the best I could come up with. And locking him up and throwing away the key would be a waste, wouldn't it?"  
  
Katara hesitates for just a second too long. "What did he say to that?"  
  
"Nothing. Just that he wanted to keep a low profile and live a quiet life."  
  
"Did he give any indication as to where he was going?"  
  
"Not really. He did say that he was heading back north, but then he seemed to change his mind about it. He didn't appear to have much in the way of contingency plans. I suppose he was in shock."  
  
"Any injuries?"  
  
"Some burns across his back. He, ah, he didn't look very healthy before he left me, so..." Tarrlok's mind wanders. He'd meant to kill Noatak cleanly. He thinks of all the botched kills he used to make during hunting trips, and how the animals would twitch and squeal before Noatak would snap their necks for him. "I don't suppose you could tell me how close you are to catching him, could you?"  
  
Katara frowns a little at the question, but replies, "Well, it's a little tricky. A reliable witness reported a sighting of him in the Fei Cui Province, and then he disappeared. The Republic City police and the United Forces are currently working in conjunction with the local authorities to track him down, but... Things aren't progressing as quickly as I'd like."  
  
Tarrlok is somewhat familiar with the Fei Cui Province. Most of the Triads imported various illegal substances from there.  
  
"What are the odds that Noatak is dead?" he asks, without really feeling anything. Noatak did make a lot of enemies.  
  
"I can't say," Katara answers, and sounds genuinely apologetic.  
  
"If he's alive, then I have no idea where he is. I don't know how much help I can be."  
  
"Could you write down a report on what happened after you were caught by the Equalists?” Katara asks. “You know how these investigations go: sometimes we appreciate all the information we can get, regardless of whether it seems relevant or not."  
  
_You're desperate, then,_ Tarrlok thinks. He makes an effort to keep a neutral expression. Mulling over everything and writing it down on paper might be even less pleasant than actually talking about it. "If you want. Sure."  
  
He evidently doesn't do a very good job of hiding his thoughts, because Katara gives him a long look, and says, "I realize that none of this is easy for you. In many ways, I'm making things worse, aren't I?"  
  
"You don't owe me anything," Tarrlok says.  
  
Katara leans back a bit and screws up her nose as if she doesn't agree with that. "I owe you basic human courtesy."  
  
That's nice, but Tarrlok isn't quite willing to accept her whole 'benevolent matriarch' act just yet. "Even though I attacked the Avatar and bloodbent your son?"  
  
"Even though you attacked the Avatar, bloodbent my son _and_ Lin _and_ several others, had innocent people arrested, used a terrorist threat as an opportunity to launch a vanity project, bribed and blackmailed a number of influential figures into becoming your personal Yes Men, _and_ spent your entire term pushing policies I strongly disagreed with."  
  
"I take it you voted for the other guy," Tarrlok mutters.  
  
"Regardless, I'm in no great hurry to see you put behind bars,” Katara says. “People never seem to improve much while in prison."  
  
"You don't think I'm dangerous?"  
  
"Not to me."  
  
Tarrlok wasn't aware that he had any pride left, but he still bristles a little at her comment. Katara might look like someone's wrinkly little grandmother - she's so small that he could probably pick her up and throw her (if he was feeling suicidal enough to try) - but she seems like the sort of person who wields power easily. There's an effortlessness to her authority, and he imagines that she was born with this aptitude.  
  
A while ago, he might've liked to flatter himself by believing that he and Katara had common ground.  
  
Yet despite his envy, he still finds himself unable to dislike the woman.  
  
"So now you're stuck with keeping an eye on me to make sure I don't do anything stupid," he replies.  
  
"I'm afraid so." Katara gets up from her stool. "You can make up for it by fetching some pickled radishes from the top shelf over there. I'll need you to open the jar."  
  
Ha. Fine. Tarrlok rubs some sleep out his eyes, then stands. The jar of radishes is in easy reach; he opens the jat by tucking it in the crook of his elbow. Behind him, Katara potters around, taking more things from cupboards. Perhaps it's the acoustics of the bare walls, but everything she does seems a little too loud.  
  
"Do you need a hand with carrying things?" he asks. (Wait. 'Need a hand?' Did he really just say that? That's not funny.)  
  
"If you don't mind," Katara replies.  
  
Tarrlok goes to find a tray, and gets that unpleasant urge to laugh again. When you've discussed attempted fratricide before breakfast, who knows where your day will go from there?


	2. Summer, ASC 171

\--

Lunch isn't as awkward as it could be. Beifong remains (mercifully) absent, while Korra only turns up to grab a chunk of bread and skulk off again. Tarrlok and Katara sit in the courtyard and eat in silence.

Afterwards, Tarrlok returns to the guest room. He hunts through desk drawers until he finds a writing kit. He spends a while grinding the ink to the perfect consistency.

Then he inks the brush and confronts the blank piece of paper.

When he tries to begin the report by writing down the date and time, time, the ink has already dried out.

He cleans the ink stone with the hem of his shirt, not wanting to go back outside to get a cloth, and repeats the process of grinding the ink. 

Just as he touches the brush to the paper again, someone knocks on the door.

"Come in," he says, because telling them to fuck off just isn't an option.

Korra opens the door by a crack, and peers into the room. "Um, hi. Am I interrupting?"

Yes. "No, of course not," Tarrlok replies.

Korra ventures a few steps inside, then proceeds to gawk at the Air Nomad scroll on the wall... Which, in all fairness, is much prettier than Tarrlok right now.

"So. Did you sleep well?" Korra asks, attention still on the scroll.

"I slept just fine, thank you. Can I help you with something?"

"No. I just, uh- what are you doing?"

"Katara asked for a written account of what happened after I-... Well, after I ended up on Air Temple Island."

Korra stops pretending to read the stupid scroll, and takes a good look at Tarrlok. He wonders what she's thinking. Probably 'do I want to be alone in a room with this man?' (no) or 'how did this asshole get appointed as head of the council?' (blackmail, partly) or 'why the does he have an ink stain on his shirt?' (it was already a bad shirt). She then moves closer so she can peer over his shoulder, eyeing the blank paper on the desk. 

After a long pause, she offers, "I could write things down for you."

"That's very... helpful, but I can write just fine," Tarrlok says, although there's no reason why Korra shouldn't write things for him. He won't have any secrets from her. She'll probably read the report after it's complete anyway. And perhaps dictation will speed up the writing process.

"Okay," Korra says, flatly. 

"Though, actually, I think I'll take you up on your offer," Tarrlok adds. He stands up so Korra can have his chair.

Korra squints at him. She sits down and picks up the writing brush.

"You can start by writing down 'nineteenth day of the eleventh month'," Tarrlok begins, then realizes that he's starting with the day that he kidnapped her. "Wait. No. 'twentieth day of the eleventh month, tenth hour'."

Korra ponderously drags the brush over the paper, then looks up.

Tarrlok tries to think of what comes next.

"Tarrlok?" Korra prompts.

"I'm thinking."

Korra watches him. She chews the end of the brush handle. It was a very nice brush, too. It looked like one of the more expensive ones.

Tarrlok checks what she's written so far. Twentieth day of the eleventh month, tenth hour. Yes, that's certainly a sentence. That's a good start. The paper looks a little less blank now. Which is good.

...Though Korra's brush strokes are rather sloppy. Wasn't she raised by the White Lotus? The Avatar is meant to be an effective communicator. Couldn't the White Lotus at least teach proper penmanship?"

"Your writing is worse than mine, and I used to be right-handed," Tarrlok mutters, then pauses because oh for the love of Yue's left tit why did he just say that out loud? What's wrong with him? (And has something always been wrong with him, or can he blame it on Noatak somehow?)

"I'm trying to help you out here," Korra snaps, slamming the brush against the desk.

"I know. Sorry."

Korra keeps watching him, now with narrowed eyes.

Tarrlok gets a strange urge to take a small step backwards.

Korra clears her throat. "So, are you going to tell me what else to write, or are you just going to stand there and look at me like you think I'm stupid?"

"I don't think you're stupid," Tarrlok says, automatically.

"Yeah, you do. When you were a councilman you used to act like you thought _everybody_ was stupid."

That's not true, but it's also not worth fighting over. "Well, I'm no longer a councilman," Tarrlok says (without wincing), "and I don't think you're stupid." ('Spoiled' would be a more charitable description.)

Korra's expression remains sour, but she picks up the writing brush again, and looks back at the paper. "Fine, whatever. Now what?"

"I'm thinking," Tarrlok repeats.

Korra blows a few strands of hair out of her face. "You don't really want to do this, do you?"

"What?"

"The whole 'writing an account about Air Temple Island' thing."

"Actually, I do. I'm just... not very articulate lately."

"Yeah, maybe that's normal, might be a side-effect of, uh-" Korra taps her forehead with her index finger.

That'd be a convenient explanation. "Maybe."

"I felt pretty weird after I lost my bending that time," Korra adds.

"Oh."

"I couldn't think properly, and... I don't know. It was bad."

How is Tarrlok meant to reply to that? Should he make sympathetic noises? Should he apologize on Noatak's behalf? "But you're alright now, aren't you?" he asks. 

"Yeah. I feel much better."

"Good," Tarrlok says, and hopes it doesn't sound a little flat.

Korra studies him for another moment (and he can already tell that this is another another thing he'll grow tired of: tired of being looked at, tired being assessed, tired of people trying to understand, and oh wonderful here comes another bout of self-pity), and then she says, "Do you want your bending back?"

Tarrlok's mouth skips ahead of his brain, and he hears himself say, "Why are you asking me that?"

"I dunno. Just wondering." 

"No, I don't want it back. Why do you need to know? Is this some kind of test?"

Korra leans away from him. "What? No. Now you're being weird."

"Then why did you ask?" Tarrlok says, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. Old habits die hard, and there's still a part of him that wants to move closer to the girl and invade her personal space. She's sitting, he's standing; it'd be easy to put an arm on the desk and loom over her. Korra looks deceptively small, sometimes.

He tells himself that he's stupid, but he's not that stupid.

"I just, I mean, I thought-..." Korra begins, then holds up her hands. "Never mind, I get it, you don't want it back. Forget I said anything."

Tarrlok takes a deep breath and counts to five. "Isn't there a waiting list for that sort of thing, anyway?"

"Not really." Korra keeps her back straight, remaining on guard. "I've fixed most of people who Amon messed up."

"Most of them?"

"Most of the ones we know about, anyhow. I mean, I've fixed all the ones who've asked. I guess there might still be a few guys out there who don't want to talk to me because they're worried I might arrest them, maybe, but there can't be that many left."

"So you're helping anyone who comes to you?"

"I guess."

"You don't have a, ah, vetting process of sorts?"

Korra shrugs, now making an effort to hide any residual unease. "No."

"Why not?"

Korra gives him that 'now you're being weird' look again. "You can't, uh, vet people so you can decide if they should have something that was always theirs in the first place."

"What about criminals?"

Korra gives another shrug, although it's more of an irritable twitch this time. "I'd give them their bending back and then arrest them."

"Wouldn't it be easier to do it the other way around?"

"It hasn't really been an issue yet," Korra mutters. "Because they're avoiding me. Like I said."

"It's the principle of it, though. Does the general public condone the idea of you helping criminals?"

"Yeah, uh, no, not really, but it's my decision." Korra gives a little huff like she's quickly becoming bored with this conversation. "The way I understand it is, you only take someone's bending away if you've not got any other option... I mean, no other option beside, uh, killing them, anyway. It's a, what's it, a you know, a compromise, and people that dangerous are pretty rare, like-"

"Like bloodbenders."

"Maybe. But, like... I was the first human you'd ever bloodbent, right? And you hated doing it?"

"Yes. But you only have my word on that."

"What, you're saying I shouldn't believe you?"

"I think you're just a little too trusting, that's all."

"I am _not_ ," Korra grumbles. "You were honest with me about Amon, so..."

"Again, it's a matter of principle. I attacked you. If someone attacks you, then you should always treat that person as a potential threat."

Korra props her elbow on the desk and rests her chin on her palm. She stares at him in frustration, as if she's not sure whether she's currently engaged in an argument or not... And if she is engaged in an argument, then she doesn't know what it's about, or who's meant to be winning. Eventually, she says, "Well, I attacked you back. Will you always see me as a potential threat?"

Tarrlok draws a very deep breath before answering. "Yes."

"Do you hate me?" Korra asks, brow still furrowed.

"No."

Korra jabs her index finger at him. "So... Let me get this right: you like me, but you're scared of me?"

Why does she have to phrase it like that? "I think you're a promising young woman who could grow up to be someone strong, fair, and charismatic and I'm not about to forget that you came alarmingly close to setting me on fire."

"Yeah. That happened," Korra mutters. She's quiet for a moment, thoughtful. "...For what it's worth, I promise I won't try to set you on fire again."

"Good."

"Unless you act like a dick."

"Duly noted."

"So you'll be less of a dick in future, right?"

"I'll try."

"If you act like a dick, I'll tell you."

"Uh, before or after you try to set me on fire?"

"Before. Obviously."

"Very well."

Korra sticks out her chin and slowly nods. "Now are we going to write this report about Air Temple Island together or not?"

Tarrlok tries to think of an answer to that. His mind feels like it's a broken radio. If he listens hard enough, maybe he can hear the hiss of static, sibilant as waves against shore.

"You can say 'no'," Korra says, in a tone that suggests she's pretty close to throwing the writing brush at him. Future generations will remember Avatar Korra for many things, but she won't be remembered for her patience.

"Perhaps you'd better let me write it by myself," Tarrlok replies. "I just need to get my head straightened out."

"You could try meditating," Korra offers.

Tarrlok manages to ask "Do you think that'd help?" without grimacing.

"...Probably not," Korra admits. "But I wondering what Katara or Tenzin would tell me if I was in your situation, and they'd say, 'try meditating', so..." She stands up from the chair, and glances down at the floor. She looks worryingly young for a moment. "I'm sorry. I just feel like I should be doing more to help, or something."

"Don't worry about it. I'm fine," Tarrlok says.

Korra gives him another one of those annoyingly speculative looks, then says, "Sheesh, I don't know. This entire situation sucks. Do you want a hug?"

Tarrlok takes a moment to make sure he's heard her correctly. "Excuse me, what? No. Don't offer hugs to strange men."

"Uh, I think I can hug who I like, thanks," Korra says, and somehow manages to make it sound like a threat.

Tarrlok almost tells her to have some propriety, then checks himself. "If you say so. But I'm alright."

"You don't look alright."

"I-"

"Seriously, you look like crap."

"Thank you, Avatar Korra, your opinion on my appearance has been noted," Tarrlok says. "I will be alright after I've finished this report. Which I was trying to write. Until you stopped by. Thank you."

"Fine, I'm going," Korra says, and marches out the room.

Tarrlok retakes his seat at the desk so he can resume staring at the blank paper. 

He picks up the writing brush, studies the teeth marks in the handle, and tsks. 

\-- 

When Katara is required to be patient, she sews.

She's not sure why. No one needs her to repair their clothes; no one's going to ask her to make a pair of kamiks for them. The only nice thing she can say about sewing is that it reminds her of winter nights long past, spent indoors with her grandmother, snug in the warmth of an oil lamp. Her hands move of their own accord, in spite of the pain in her knuckles. There's something hypnotic about the rise and fall of the needle, the push-pull.

And she's better at sewing than she is at gardening, oddly enough. Gardening would be her other method for killing time, but plants only appreciate so much interference, and Katara has never known when to leave things well alone. (Sometimes she sheepishly looks at the two perfect peach trees in the courtyard, and she wants to apologize to them.)

Today, she leaves the garden in peace, and sits on the lawn of the courtyard while she makes socks for her youngest grandson. You can never have too many socks. Hers is a family that spends a lot of time on its feet.

Around mid-day, just as she's using her remaining teeth to break a piece of thread, she senses Tarrlok's approach. His heartbeat reminds her of a rabbit's.

Katara's gut instinct tells her to stand up and face him.

Just for once, she ignores her gut instinct.

She ties off the thread. 

Tarrlok hesitates when he's several paces away from her. Then he moves closer until he's just at the edge of her vision, says something that she doesn't quite catch - probably 'ma'am?' - and offers a rolled up piece of paper, holding it at arm's length.

"Ah, thank you," Katara says, looking up. She takes the paper - presumably the report she asked for earlier - and tucks it into her sewing kit. She'd like to smile at Tarrlok as if to tell him that things will be alright, but she knows he wouldn't believe it for a moment. "Sit with me."

Tarrlok casts a wary glance around the courtyard before kneeling on the grass. He keeps his back straight and rests his hands on his knees, and affects the same blank expression that he had when Lin brought him here yesterday.

Katara eyes the ink stain on his shirt. "You know, if you ever need to borrow anything that you find in this house - within reason, of course - just go ahead and take it."

Tarrlok follows her line of sight to the stain. "That's very generous. Thank you."

"Did you come all this way without bothering to bring any spare clothes?"

"It... seems that way," Tarrlok says, blinking at her.

"That wasn't very sensible."

Tarrlok offers a brief, thin smile. "Sorry."

"Have you left any belongings back at the temple where you were staying?"

"No."

"Ah," Katara sighs. "I've been meaning to ask if you would've had any items that belonged to Noatak, but-"

Tarrlok shakes his head, offers another, "Sorry," then adds, "I assume you're asking because you intend to send a shirshu tracker after him?"

"Correct."

"Hmm." Tarrlok looks up at the sky and scratches his chin. "Why didn't you send one after me?" There's no judgment in his tone, just tired curiosity.

"We did. It didn't work," Katara tells him. "Apparently you smell different now."

Tarrlok stops scratching his chin, eyes widening by a fraction.

"And I'm not implying that you need a bath," Katara adds.

Tarrlok relaxes a little.

"Anyway, yes, you were surprisingly tricky to locate," Katara says. "Though perhaps that's a good thing. I'm just glad we got to you before the Equalists did." It'd be so easy to hurt Tarrlok to get to Amon. It'd be so easy to use Tarrlok as bait. She won't pretend that she hasn't considered it.

"Are they still that much of a problem?" Tarrlok frowns. Katara can imagine him piecing his knowledge of the world back together, handling the shards carefully. "I don't really recall hearing anyone talk about them much while I was at the temple."

Katara puffs out her cheeks and lets out a deep breath. "I think that, by this point, the only Equalists left are the really tenacious ones."

Tarrlok falls silent. Katara studies his worry lines, and compares his face to the photographs she's seen of him. Tarrlok then says, very slowly, "When was Noatak last seen, by the way?"

"About a month ago." 

"What was he doing?"

Running away from someone. "He was in a town called Ruyi, living as a vagrant," Katara says. "He appeared to be in decent health." 

(Healthy enough to run away, at least.)

Tarrlok eyes her. Katara waits to see if he'll accuse her of being economical with the truth, but... No. He knows she's withholding information, but he doesn't comment on it, and she's left feeling a little disgusted with herself. 

"If he's still alive, you'll find him, won't you?" Tarrlok asks, with misplaced hope.

Katara should say, 'I'll try'. That would be reasonable. But instead, she says, "Of course. I've already made travel arrangements to the Earth Kingdom."

Tarrlok nods. His expression remains thoughtful. "Well, if you find him, please don't, uh. Don't make him suffer. No matter what he does."

Katara forces a smile. "I'm not that sort of person, Tarrlok."

Tarrlok just gets a look on his face like he's trying to think of the most tactful way to say, 'I don't believe that'. He's wrong, though. Katara isn't as vindictive as she'd sometimes like to be. 

"When are you leaving?" Tarrlok says. 

"Next week, actually. It's pure luck that we had this opportunity to speak while I was still in the United Republic."

"Then, if you don't mind my asking, what are your plans for me?"

"Well, like I said, you're a source of controversy. If things were solely up to me, I'd want you around during the course of the investigation; I'd ask you to come with me to the Earth Kingdom," Katara replies, struggling to keep an apologetic note out of her voice. "However, there are certain parties who think you should stand trial as soon as possible. I think that some of their concerns are valid. And there's a limit to how much I can bend the law-"

Tarrlok interrupts. "Let me guess, the rest of the Council has rushed to denounce me as a dangerous lunatic, and they're saying that all of the problems in the city are somehow my fault."

"Something like that. People were certainly quick to drag your name through the mud after you went missing," Katara says. "But-"

Tarrlok interrupts again. "Wait. Does the Council know that I've been caught?"

"Tenzin's the only person on the Council who knows," Katara says, and vows to clout him the next time he talks over her.

Tarrlok just says, "Ah." His expression doesn't change. At all.

"For the time being, we've reached a compromise," Katara adds. "You won't be standing trial any time soon, but you're to remain in White Lotus custody. You'll be staying at one of our compounds on the outskirts of the city, partly supervised by the Republic City police." Mostly for his own protection.

"I really am being detained indefinitely?" Tarrlok says. If he has more than two braincells to bang together, then he should appreciate the irony of this. 

Katara shrugs. "The official excuse is that you'll be staying in White Lotus custody for medical reasons."

"What medical reasons-..." Tarrlok begins, and then something clicks. He slowly breathes in, perhaps trying to decide if he should feel offended or guilty. Then he glances to his damaged hand, and he apparently feels the need to state, "...Look, for the record, but I'm not about to do anything... problematic. As I've said, I genuinely want to see that Noatak is found, and I want to help as much as possible." The last sentence sounds a little rehearsed.

"You won't have people constantly watching you, if that's what you're concerned about," Katara says, and leaves it at that. 

"So I'm being detained indefinitely," Tarrlok replies, gaze lowered. "Very well. I'm in no position to argue with that."

Katara wants to reach out and pat his shoulder.

"...Hang on," says Tarrlok, as if he's just realized something. "...Has anyone been feeding my fish while I've been away?"

"I'd assume so, but I can double-check," Katara says, without batting an eye at the question. Although she's not overly thrilled about the prospect of telling Tarrlok that, on top of everything else, his fish have starved to death. If the worst comes to the worst, perhaps she could get someone to speak with his former housekeeper and buy him some new fish that are identical to the old ones. That trick worked on Kya, once, about... oh, a little under fifty years ago.

"Thank you," Tarrlok mutters.

"Is there anything else you want me to check on?"

Tarrlok keeps his gaze on the ground, though he furrows his brow for a moment. "No. Just the fish."

Katara is about to ask him if there's anything he needs from Republic City - any personal belongings, and so on - but something catches Tarrlok's attention, and he looks up, watching the main gate. Katara squints and tries to see what he's staring at.

It takes a while for her to notice the faint rumble of an engine; Tarrlok would've heard it long before she did. Just as her ears adjust to the sound, the engine stops, and a courier walks into the courtyard, pushing a Satocycle. The insignia of the White Lotus is clearly visible on the left sleeve of his leathers.

The courier removes his helmet and goggles, shakes some of the sweat out of his hair, then walks over. He must be one of the new ones, because he seems slightly nervous. Katara's mind searches for his name as he bows and says, "Grand Lotus."

"Cho, right?" Katara asks.

"Ma'am." The goggle marks around his eyes make him look like an owl. He takes a scroll case out of his jacket and hands it over, only briefly glancing at Tarrlok.

"Help yourself to anything in the kitchen," Katara says, and weighs the scroll case in her hands. Well, at least it's not too heavy. It never bodes well when someone hands you a scroll that could double as a rolling pin. 

Katara and waves away Cho's muttered, 'Thank you, ma'am', and opens the case. 

She unrolls the scroll just enough to see Tenzin's seal. She wonders if the scroll really contains Official Business, or if Tenzin just wanted an excuse to use fancy stationary. The fact that the missive was delivered by courier suggests the former, but you can never tell with that boy. 

Out the corner of her eye, she sees Tarrlok watching her patiently, like a dog by a dinner table.

"I think I should go inside and find my reading glasses," Katara muses, though this excuse is pretty transparent. If she can sew without the aid of glasses, then one could argue that she shouldn't need them for reading the scroll.

Tarrlok picks up on the hint that she wants to be alone, and stands up. He moves slowly, but still with a certain fluidity (though he could stand to eat a few meals, Katara notes).

"Would you mind holding out your hand?" Katara asks.

Tarrlok almost offers his right hand, hesitates, then offers his left, instead.

"Thank you." Katara takes his hand and uses it to pull herself up. She's a concerned that she might just pull him over because she's heavier than she looks, but he provides enough leverage for her to stand and straighten her knees.

Katara dusts off her skirt, sticks Tenzin's scroll in her sewing kit next to Tarrlok's report, offers Tarrlok a small bow, and heads inside the house.

\--

When Tarrlok is back in the guest room, taking far too long to choose a clean shirt from the small selection in the wardrobe, he hears shouting.

The voice is definitely Korra's, and it's coming from somewhere inside the house. He hears her yell something that sounds like, 'BUT THAT'S JUST POINTLESS'. 

Tarrlok puts his ear to the wall and listens for a rebuttal, or furniture being smashed, or... something, but there's nothing, just the creak of floorboards and the distant rattle of the cicadas in the surrounding woods.

He tells himself that it's none of his business, and resumes staring at shirts. (A quiet voice at the back of his mind points out that the shirts are all near-identical anyway.)

A little while later, he hears a the engine of a Satomobile. By the time he looks outside, though, the vehicle has gone.

\--

In the early evening, someone knocks on the door of the guest room. Tarrlok expects it to be Korra. 

Instead, he finds Beifong. Ah. He was wondering when she'd turn up again. He fights the urge to close the door in her face, aware that she'd probably just tear the thing off its hinges and throw it at him.

"Tarrlok," Beifong says, pronouncing his name as if it's something you'd find on your hands after squeezing an infected pimple.

"Yes, that would be me," Tarrlok replies, and leaves off adding, 'unfortunately'.

"Hope you've not got too comfortable here." Beifong takes a step back so she isn't blocking the doorway. "You're leaving. This way."

Tarrlok stays inside the guest room. 

Part of him wonders if he should apologize to Beifong - sure, he made her lose her job, but it wasn't anything personal (and besides, she brought it on herself, and it's a known fact that she only became chief through family connections anyway) - while another part of him just wants to tell her to fuck right off. She's not Korra, and she's not Katara, and therefore he doesn't owe her anything. She's just collateral damage. She's an overpaid beat cop who's been promoted well beyond her level of incompetence.

He should probably say something, but he's not sure what.

Beifong scowls at him for a moment, then puts her hands on her hips. "Well?"

It dawns on Tarrlok that he could very well spend the rest of his life taking orders from useless little people who hate him.

"When you say I'm leaving, you mean I'm going to stay with the White Lotus? Now?" 

"Yeah."

"Shouldn't I at least say goodbye to Katara before I go?"

"She's gone. Called away on business," Beifong replies. "You want to tell her anything, I'll pass it on to her."

"I just wanted to thank her for her hospitality, that's all." Tarrlok tells himself to get a grip, and starts walking. Beifong stays a step behind him, keeping him in view.

Beifong directs him to a satomobile - the same one he arrived in - parked outside the house. Korra is already slouched on the back seat, with her arms crossed; Tarrlok glances through the window at her, and gets a good glimpse of the truly spectacular pout the Avatar is wearing. Korra, to her credit, has somehow managed to produce an expression that's even more sour than Beifong's. The girl looks as if she should have a tiny storm cloud floating over her head. Perhaps she could make one.

Tarrlok gets a slight sense of foreboding.

He sits down in the passenger seat.

Beifong slams the Satomobile door like she intends to break it, then gets in from the driver's side and starts the engine.

Tarrlok refrains from looking out the windows of the vehicle. He just contemplates the shirt he's wearing, and wishes he'd picked another. 

\--

They drive in silence for a while before Beifong asks, out of nowhere, "Have you told him yet?"

Tarrlok isn't sure who she's addressing at first, and then he realizes that the 'him' might be... well, him. 

Behind him, Korra's seat creaks as she fidgets. "I was going to. In a while. Soon," she says.

"Told me what?" Tarrlok says. (He's spent the past few months in the temple with people talking about him as if he isn't present. People can knock it off.)

Korra grumbles, "Tenzin's set on pressing charges 'cos you attacked him and the rest of the council."

Ah. Wait. Is that all? Is that really why Korra looks so sullen? "That's... rather what I was expecting," Tarrlok says, turning to look back at her. There has to be more to her bad mood than that, right?

Korra just lets out a small huff, as if _she's_ the one who'll be charged for bloodbending.

Tarrlok casts a furtive glance at Beifong. Beifong should be among the people who'll testify against him, after all. But Beifong just looks straight ahead and concentrates on driving. If she's gloating, she's doing a good job of hiding it. (Though gloating would imply that Beifong is capable of pleasure, and it's a known fact that the woman's face would crack if she smiled.)

The rest of the journey is uneventful, punctuated only by the occasional grumpy teenage sigh from the back seat.

\--

The landscape changes, and they drive through rolling hillside. Whenever they pass through a village, or encounter a cart on the road, Korra's seat creaks as if she's hunkering down so she can't be seen through the windows. Maybe she's worried the locals might ask her to bless their crops or exorcise evil spirits from their farm animals. Maybe she's just enjoying her bad mood and wants to be left alone with it.

They eventually come to the White Lotus compound, which is another siheyuan, but much larger than Katara's. The walls are higher. Not that Tarrlok intends to be climbing over walls any time soon. 

There are two guards posted by the main gate, bored and sweaty in their starched white uniforms. They wave Beifong through, allowing her to park the Satomobile inside the perimeter.

Tarrlok lets Beifong open the Satomobile's door, then unsticks himself from the passenger seat and steps out. The air outdoors is just as humid as the interior of the Satomobile. Tarrlok would worry about it ruining his hair if wasn't quite sure that he'd ruined his hair already.

The sky is now the color of blank paper.

There are more guards waiting, ready to provide an escort; the guards lead them further into the compound, until they come to a paved courtyard that's empty save for a few target bosses. Calling the compound a 'siheyuan' now seems like a misnomer. The building is shaped around a quadrangle, granted, but Tarrlok has seen the same layout used for plenty of forts and prisons. 

They pause at the centre of the courtyard. Beifong clears her throat, and gives Korra a pointed look. 

Korra takes a slight step forward and peers at Tarrlok sheepishly. "I have to go back to the city now. Lin'll show you around." 

Tarrlok just nods.

"You'll be okay here, right?" Korra says. Her glower has softened over the past few minutes. "I mean, it's not a bad place. Kind of reminds me of where I grew up, actually."

"I'll be fine," he answers.

"I'll come visit you when I have time, and, uh... Look, if you need anything, you can just ask." Korra glances to the guards, then focuses on Tarrlok again. "Yeah, you'll be okay."

Tarrlok gives her a practiced smile. "Go back to Republic City, Korra. I bet you have plenty of other things you _should_ be worrying about."

Korra bristles, pursing her lips. She glances over at Beifong, who gives her a Look. "Alright. Fine. Bye, Tarrlok," Korra mutters, then stomps off back the way she came, shoulders squared, hands curled into fists.

Tarrlok sighs as discreetly as possible.

He now now finds himself alone with Beifong and the guards. He tells himself that he's fine with this. The guards are just doing their jobs. He'll do whatever they ask. There will be no problems. They have no reason to hurt him, apart from boredom, and he's too high-profile for them to take any unnecessary risks. Probably. 

And if Beifong tries anything, she'll have to answer to Korra and Katara.

Though it would be her word against his, of course.

(He wonders if there's a healer in the compound. That was the old way of doing things: rough someone up, then get a healer to erase with the evidence. Not that Tarrlok ever needed to resort to that, back when he was on the force. Waterbenders have options that don't leave marks.)

"That way," Beifong says, pointing to a door in the northernmost part of the compound.

Tarrlok should move, but can't.

Beifong rolls her eyes. "Please," she adds.

Tarrlok snaps out of it, and starts walking.

\--

The compound has an unpleasantly institutional feel that Tarrlok associates with minor government offices. Everything smells of dust, food, and oil lamps, although also there's a faint whiff of incense in the air. He's escorted down several bare stone corridors and led to a room that - yes - has a conspicuously large lock on the door, though the interior contains such mod cons as a desk and a proper bed. It's not quite a cell, though the Powers That Be clearly don't expect him to take any evening constitutionals without their permission.

He's left with Beifong, who briskly informs him of all the things he's not allowed to do (no going beyond the inner wall, don't leave the room between sundown and sunrise, keep out of the offices on the upper floors, blah blah), then warns him that he'll be randomly checked on every so often, and that dinner will be congee with vegetables. 

Tarrlok fully expects the congee to be terrible, and isn't disappointed.

As he sits in his room and pushes the congee around with a spoon, he wonders how he'll cope with prison food. He wonders how his father coped with prison food. Then he remembers that his father probably didn't have to cope with prison food. His father was not a man who coped with things. Things had to cope with his father.

Beifong loiters around during the meal, arms crossed, leaning against a wall. Her presence doesn't do much for Tarrlok's appetite. He has a nasty suspicion that she's only hanging around because she spat in his food earlier and now wants to see him eat it. That's what he might do, if he was in her situation. (Or perhaps not. He'd like to think that spitting in people's food is beneath him, and that he's moved on to more adult forms of retaliation, such as seizing people's property and arresting their relatives. Unfortunately, Tarrlok doesn't have any property that hasn't already been seized, and his only remaining relative is a guy who he actually _wants_ arrested.)

"Is there anything you'd like to talk to me about?" Tarrlok asks Beifong, when it becomes clear that she won't be leaving any time soon. 

Beifong barely glances at him. "Nope."

"Oh." Tarrlok almost asks her if she's expecting a tip for bringing him dinner, then thinks better of it. Then he looks down at his spoon. Is she watching him because she think he'll steal the cutlery, fashion it into a weapon, and use it to shank one of the guards in the eye before making a grand escape? Because he really doesn't need that sort of excitement in his life.

He inspects something green and soggy that he hopes is cabbage, and remembers something. 

"You have a younger sister, don't you?" he asks Beifong, idly.

Beifong now looks up. Her expression suggests that Tarrlok should probably regret asking that question. Still, stupid as she is, she isn't quite stupid enough to say, 'how do you know what?' or 'mind your own business'. Other peoples' business used to be part of his job.

"You should talk to her," Tarrlok says, without making eye contact.

Beifong uncrosses her arms, which triggers a small fight-or-flight response in the part of Tarrlok's brain that's still eleven years old.

Tarrlok pretends to take great interest in the piece of organic matter floating in his congee. "It might not seem like it, but she likely misses you."

He can sense Beifong tense up (which is surprising, because he thought he'd lost his awareness of subtle body language after losing his ability to bloodbend) and he quickly puts the bowl of congee down on the desk so he won't drop it if she hits him. 

But Beifong just says, "Not interested," and walks out of the room. The sound of her footsteps recedes down the corridor. 

Ah, good. That got rid of her.

(Tarrlok sits and waits for a minute. Then he smirks when he hears the stomp of Beifong's footsteps as she returns to slam the door closed, lock it, and grumble about something before storming off again.)

\--

When he loses interest in his meal, Tarrlok gets it into his head to try doing some push-ups, but gives up after ten. He spends some time pacing around the room.

Finally, he goes to bed out of sheer boredom.

He tells himself that boredom isn't so bad, and that there are worse things, though he can't stop picturing Noatak as an old man in a cell, not quite awake, not quite asleep. The weight of the years presses against his mind.

Outside, it begins to rain.

\--

Tarrlok dreams about the time he was eight and he accidentally hit his father in the face with a harpoon handle. 

The dream isn't as satisfying as it should be.

\--

Someone gently shakes Tarrlok's shoulder. He blinks the sleep out of his eyes.

There's a moment of disorientation that almost gives way to panic. He doesn't know where he is. This isn't his apartment. This room is too cramped. Why does it have bare stone walls? He thinks of Noatak, and of forgotten rooms, old attics, empty houses, closed doors. Then he recalls meeting Katara yesterday, and his brain manages to catch up with reality. The fear subsides.

There's just enough light coming through the small, high windows to define the shape of the girl standing over him.

She puts her index finger to her mouth to say be quiet.

"Korra?" he murmurs. A year ago, he might have been quite happy to find the Avatar in his bedroom, but now he just has the nagging feeling that she's here to kill him.

"Shhh," she replies. Yes, she's definitely Korra.

Tarrlok sits up in bed. Whatever she wants, it's too early for it. Or too late. His sense of time has been a mess ever since his encounter with the Equalists. "What are you doing here?"

Korra stands back so she's not looming over him so much. "I'm breaking you out."

Oh, alright. Wait. No. What? "But I only just got there," Tarrlok says.

"Well, now you're leaving again," Korra replies. "Come on. Get your shoes."

"What is the meaning of this?" Tarrlok hisses. It's (probably) the middle of the night. He's not going anywhere without a cup of tea first. Besides, it's still pelting it down with rain outside. It's loud enough for him to hear it. He's developed a special hatred of rain over the past few months.

Also, he's dimly aware that if he leaves the compound, it'll look like he's continuing the family tradition of going on the lam. This should bother him more than the rain, really.

Korra keeps her voice low. "I'm going to find Amon, and you're going to help."

"What?"

"I said, I'm going to find Amon and-..."

There are not enough cups of tea in the world for this. "I heard you. No!"

Korra pauses. Tarrlok can tell she's staring at him by the way she tilts her head. "Really? You'd rather stay here? Because-"

Tarrlok cuts her off. "Why do you need to find Am-... Noatak, and why do you expect me to help you? What about Katara? Hasn't she gone to find Amon? Aren't I meant to be going to trial soon? Wasn't Tenzin going to press charges? Why are you in my room? How did you get in here? Is this legal? This isn't legal, is it? What do you think you're doing?"

"I'll, uh, explain later," Korra says. 

Tarrlok wants to hit her. "You're seriously asking me to go with you?"

"Well. Yeah." 

"No. You'll get me in more trouble than I'm in already."

Korra puts her hands on her hips, and takes a moment to think. "You can tell everyone I kidnapped you," she says, darkly, "Don't worry, I won't lock you in a metal box."

"And if you kidnap me, then what?" Tarrlok snaps.

"I'm going to head to the place where Katara's going."

"And?"

Korra pauses again. "...I'll find Amon."

No. No no no. No thanks. "Avatar Korra, that is the worst plan I have ever heard in my life, and if you think it's going to work, you're even stupider than I thought."

Korra takes a step forwards, and Tarrlok can now see her face. It looks vaguely murderous. 

Right, that's it. He's had enough.

Tarrlok takes a deep breath. "GUARDS, THE AV-"

He sees the blur of Korra's fist before everything goes dark.

\--


	3. Winter, ASC 170

_Winter, ASC 170_

 

...

Survival is simple. If you're not strong, you have to be smart. If you're not smart, you have to endure. 

Wei's first coherent thought is: _get up, kiddo. Walk it off. If you don't get up, they're going to make sure you stay down._

The world is bright and it sings with pain. He tries to focus his eyes, and discovers that he's in a large room with a high ceiling. There's gym equipment on racks, stacks of boxes, old furniture, forgotten things, the smell of dust.

Wei hauls himself to his feet and puts a hand against the wall; he follows the wall until he finds a door. He concentrates on walking. Each step requires focus. The door leads him to a corridor, and a breeze ruffles his hair. The end of the corridor is too bright to look at. 

He can smell the sea, and smoke. He wonders why he has grit in his mouth. 

He has no idea where the hell he is.

Has he been drinking? Maybe. That'd explain things.

Then someone grabs his right wrist and pulls like they want to wrench his arm out of its socket, and all he can hear is shouting and the distant wail of police sirens. His body moves of its own accord; his brain is still busy trying to unfuck itself. 

He follows a grey-clad figure down flights of stairs. There are so many stairs. A shitload of stairs. Twice as many stairs as he needs in his life right now. Each step sends a jolt of pain up his torso, running right from his ass to the scruff of his neck. His spine feels like it's a telegraph wire transmitting bad news.

The sirens are getting closer; Wei still has a good ear for these things.

Shit, _what has he done this time?_

Whatever it was, he's not going to stick around to find out.

Finally, he finds himself in the underworld, which is all wet brick walls and stale air. He wants to tell his guide that he doesn't care what he gets reincarnated as in the next life, just so long as it's something poisonous.

Then he realizes that he's in one of the tunnels under the city.

The world lurches sideways, then stops as a hand grabs his elbow. He knocks the hand away and leans against the wall. He can still hear the sirens, although he's not sure if they're real. It feels like there's something embedded in his back. He tries to touch it, but it hurts too much.

"Sir?" says a male voice on his left. Wei can't see very well. "Sir. You're okay, you're okay. Sir, we have to go."

Well, if someone says he's okay, then that's good enough. 

Wei makes himself keep moving. He feels like he should be angry about something, but he doesn't know what. 

Maybe he'll run into the anger later. Anger is a very patient thing. It can wait.

\---

The world lurches again, and he finds himself sitting on the back of a motorbike. One minute he's limping along, and then: bam, motorbike. The engine is as loud as his headache, and he can't look at the racing tunnel walls without wanting to puke.

Are they running away from something? He'd glance back to see if they bike is being followed, but that'd require moving his neck, which... yeah, no, that's not going to happen any time soon. His neck might be broken. He might even be dead already. That'd be novel. He's never been dead before.

The bike tears along for what feels like hours. Wei wants to close his eyes, but knows that he shouldn't.

Eventually, just when he's starting to believe that he's been stuck on a fucking bike in a shitty little tunnel forever and this is the entire extent of his miserable existence, the bike pulls into an alcove. Wei still has the presence of mind to note that there's already another bike propped against the tunnel wall, even though he feels like he left half his brain and most of his dignity back at... Well, wherever he was a moment ago.

The bike propped against the wall is a different model to the one he's on, but it has the same manufacturer. Future Industries. Hiroshi Sato's company. Wei knows Hiroshi Sato. Sad guy, decent when in a good mood. Good boss. Respected by his people. Kind of unstable, but the smart ones usually are, and... Huh.

Why would Wei know Hiroshi Sato? Because they've worked together. And why have they worked together? Because...

The bike's driver - the driver of the bike that Wei's sitting on - pushes out the kickstand, dismounts, and takes a bag from the back pannier. They then remove their mask. Turns out they're some Earth Kingdom-looking kid with short brown hair and a black eye. Wei knows the kid - he's known him for years - so it's going to be real awkward if he can't remember his name. 

"I sent Biyu ahead to make sure the way was clear and tell Lan we were coming," the kid says, then stares at him. "You're not gonna flake out again, are you?"

"Thanks," says Wei. Yeah, Biyu's another familiar name.

The kid keeps staring, eyes large with worry. "You need help getting off the bike?"

"No, I can.." Wei tries to move his right leg over the fuel tank, but struggles. How the fuck did he get on the bike to begin with? Did someone pick him up and stick him on it? Was a hoist involved? "I...Yeah."

The kid offers a shoulder to lean on.

"Where am I?" Wei says, although he's not sure he'll like the answer.

"Tunnel under Thousand Hands street," the kid says. 

When Wei doesn't reply, the kid adds, "We're a mile north of the Arena."

And that's when everything clicks into place.

The kid is called Zheng. Zheng is on the third chi blocking team. The third chi blocking team were posted in the east wing of the Arena; they were ordered to go after the escaped airbenders when the Avatar attacked. When the Avatar attacked, Amon went after her. When Amon went after the Avatar, Wei went after Amon, and-

Wait. Amon.

They were at the rally. That's how-

How he-

Fuck.

No.

_Shit._

...

Well, that explains why everything hurts.

Wei lets out a very deep breath. He tries to think of something to say, and settles on, "Is there something stuck in my back? Because it's killing me."

Zheng raises his eyebrows, but leans around to check Wei's shoulders. "Your back looks fine, sir."

Wei has trouble believing that, but whatever. He could panic - if his spine is damaged, he's in trouble - but it wouldn't solve anything. And anyway, Zheng is watching, so panicking and throwing a shitfit just isn't a viable option.

A thought pops into Wei's head, unbidden, and quiet, without fuss: he wishes Amon had killed him. He tries to push the thought away, but it seems so reasonable. 

"Thousand Hands street," Wei says, forcing himself to focus on the present. "That's... We're near Lan's place, right?" People's names and faces are coming back to him. Zheng, Biyu, Lan, Yi Rong, Amaguk, Gansukh, Jiru...

Zheng nods, starts walking down the tunnel, then pauses when he realizes that Wei isn't following. "Uh, this way, sir?"

"Yeah. I know. I know where I am," Wei murmurs, and makes himself put one foot in front of the other.

\--

Lan's place is accessed via a ladder that's tucked away in another alcove. Wei climbs the ladder with Zheng just a few rungs behind; Zheng probably wants to make sure that Wei won't faint again and fall off.

The ladder leads to the basement of a medicine shop, entered through a trapdoor. It's too dark to see much, but Wei recognizes the basement by its smell. He straightens up (aughfuck, it hurts) and gets a faceful of dried mulberry leaves. There are bundles of herbs hanging from the ceiling. The scent helps him focus.

Wei pushes the herbs away from his face, and tells Zheng, "I need a radio."

"Right," Zheng says, and finds a light switch. A single bulb illuminates the basement with a yellow glow, revealing shelves crowded with murky things in jars. Zheng gently pushes against one of the shelves, and it slides back easily on hidden runners, revealing the compartment where the radio is kept.

Just as Zheng hefts the radio out and sets it down on an examination bench, Lan appears on the basement's stairs, arriving in a flurry of skirts and jangling bracelets. Her expression betrays little, and her voice is quiet as she asks, "What happened?"

Wei doesn't know how to answer.

"I think he's got a bad concussion. He kept spacing out on the way here," Zheng mutters.

"I'm alright now," Wei says, on principle.

Lan walks towards Wei and stands on tip-toes so she can inspect his eyes. It's hardly the first time she's had to do this since they've known each other.

"What happened?" Lan repeats.

"I'll explain later," Wei says, stepping away from her. "I have to contact Sato."

He hasn't yet worked out how he's going to explain things to Sato, but hey, he'll burn that bridge when he comes to it, or whatever. Wei shoos Zheng away from the radio set and makes the final few adjustments by himself. Then he dons the radio's headphones and tunes the device to the frequency used by the west airfield. 

Very carefully, he taps out a code on the telegraph key, and listens for the response.

There's only the crackle of static. 

Wei checks everything - the headphones, the settings, the cabling - and tries again.

The static persists. 

Wei feels sick, but that might be the concussion.

He tunes to a different frequency, and taps in a different code, contacting one of their manned relay stations. The relay station respond just fine, so it's not Wei's radio that's the problem. 

Wei tries the airfield again. In the privacy of his mind, he bargains with whatever ancestral spirits might still be listening: _if you can get Sato to respond, I'll try to be a smarter person. I'll stop doing stupid shit. Please._

Nothing changes, though.

Wei takes off his headphones, afraid that the white noise might be messing up his ability to think, and rubs his temples. He lets himself wallow in misanthropy for a few seconds (Why isn't Sato answering? Why are people so useless? How the fuck did Sato become a millionaire despite being a gormless shitstain who should've been drowned at birth?), then turns to Lan. Lan is standing just a few paces away, idly chewing the end of her braid.

"Hey. Try and raise Sato for me," Wei, tells her. He wants to rule out the possibility that he's doing something wrong, because he can't quite yet believe that both Amon and Sato have failed him today.

Lan takes the headphones and holds one of the speakers to her left ear. She taps out the code (Wei watches to make sure she's doing it right) and holds her breath.

Wei counts ten seconds, and then Lan says, "Um, no one's responding."

Wei is beyond being angry. If anything, he wants to laugh. Laugh, and stab someone. "Alright," he says. "I'm assuming command in the meantime." 

Ha ha, they're screwed.

\--

The good news: Lan concludes from a cursory examination that Wei's back probably isn't broken. Maybe. Well, hopefully not. The battery for his kali sticks took the worst of the impact; Wei just has a massive bruise across his shoulders to show for it. Lan says the pain might be due to a herniated disc. She gives him some painkillers and dutifully offers the usual advice that Wei always ignores.

The bad news: there's everything else.

Wei radios a few of the other teams and ends up being bombarded with requests for information. Many of the messages are mis-keyed and incoherent. Wei's understanding of code isn't all that great, but he can still tell what most people are asking: what happened? What now? Help?

Wei has to take his headphones off and focus on his breathing for a moment. He won't be much help to anyone if he lets the fear get under his skin. He looks over at Zheng. "You saw the Avatar at the rally, right?" 

Zheng is sitting on the basement stairs, picking at the calluses on his hands. He glances up. "Yeah. Sir."

"Where's the rest of your team?"

"Well, Biyu should be around someplace here, but the rest of the guys stayed at the Arena to help the First and Second teams stall the United Forces."

"What did you see after the Avatar attacked?" Wei asks. He needs to be sure that someone else knows the truth.

Zheng stares for a moment, as if the question is some kind of test, and Wei's heart sinks.

"It's alright," Wei says. "Just tell me what you think you saw."

"There was a lot of stuff going on. It was pretty confusing."

"I'll bet. Don't worry if what you say sounds crazy or whatever."

Zheng glances to Lan - who is a solemn, mute presence lurking in a corner - and seems to resign himself to something. "We were trying to find the airbenders, sir. Then Biyu rushed to the window and started yelling about a huge waterspout in the bay, so I went to look. The spout was there for, what, like ten seconds, and everybody outside just sort of stopped what they were doing to point and yell at it. I thought the Avatar was causing the thing but, uh... It wasn't. It was a guy."

"And what were people yelling?" Wei asks. 

"I don't know. I couldn't hear them."

"This guy. Did you get a good look at him?"

"Sort of. He high-tailed it pretty quick, though."

"I see." Wei runs a hand through his hair. There's still plaster dust in it. He feels a pressing need to get very drunk. "Did you see where he went?"

"Not really, sir. Sorry."

Wei is about to ask Zheng if he saw the guy's face, but then someone opens the door at the top of the stairs, and a girl peers into the room. It's Biyu - she's had the sense to change back into civilian clothes, but the mad gleam in her eyes says she's still got a combat buzz.

"I, uh. Sir," Biyu breathes out, "I was watching things from the roof. I just saw Yi Rong's signal light. He says they've definitely lost the west airfield. No one knows where Sato is."

Wei only nods, unsurprised. 

\--

Wei's first task as leader is to is to find out how many people are still in the game. It turns out: not many. The defense of the harbor was a shitshow.

As they're all pretty much fucked, Wei's second task is to tell the remaining airships to get away from the city. They can't afford to lose any more vessels. A single airship costs more money than he's ever seen in his life, and it's doubtful they'll have the resources to build new ones any time soon.

As the west airfield is a goner, all the remaining aircraft will be using their backup landing locations. They all can sort themselves out and refuel. Some quick repaint jobs will be in order.

Wei's third task is to tell all the radio operators on the ground to keep sending out a retreat message for the next three minutes before burning their code books. 

Once that's done, He leans against the examination bench, and stares at nothing in particular.

He reflects: it's not first time he's lost a fight. It's not the first time he's been lied to. It's not the first time he's been unceremoniously dumped, either.

He starts laughing, which hurts.

"Sir?" Zheng says, loitering by the doorway. Biyu is back up on the roof, watching the skies with binoculars, while Lan is busy cramming a few last-minute things into an old carpet bag.

"I'm alright," Wei says. "Come on, let's get out of here." 

\---

Wei leaves Lan's basement and takes to the tunnels again. 

Running away never really stops being humiliating. It's not something that gets easier with practice.

But what else can you do? The longer they stick around, the harder it'll be to get away. The current chaos is good cover for a retreat. 

Still, there's something Wei needs to do before they leave the city.

Lan insists on going with him, as he's in no state to ride a Satocycle by himself, and she's best qualified to deal with him if he loses consciousness again. Zheng and Biyu will leave separately, taking different routes. Travelling together wouldn't make any of them safer, and Lan's probably the most (dangerous? uncompromising?) effective combatant in their little group anyway; Wei will have to stick with her for a while.

Lan hands him a gas mask - just in case they run into trouble - and says, "Where to?"

"Go down the tunnel south of Camellia Road, take the second turn," Wei says. He's pleasantly surprised that he can remember this, given the circumstances. "I need to get something from there."

Lan nods. She briefly reaches up to pick a splinter of wood out Wei's hair, but says nothing.

\---

They take Zheng's bike, although they have to still make part of the journey on foot so Lan can scout ahead and disarm any traps. Eventually they make it to the basement of a safe house. Wei runs his hands over the walls until he finds some loose bricks. With a bit of work, he uncovers a wooden box, just big enough for him to tuck under one arm. 

"You got anything you need to do before we leave?" he asks Lan. He doesn't want to leave the city. He shouldn't have to leave the city. It's his. He fought for it.

"I'm good," Lan says, though her voice suggests otherwise. Her back is turned to him as she keeps keeps watch by the doorway. 

Wei tries to think of something to say, then remembers that he's never been very good at inspirational speeches. He heads back out to the tunnel.

\---

From the safe house, it's a long drive north along a storm drain, then out and across the countryside and into the mountains, until the city is just a distant glow on the horizon. Wei stays doped up on painkillers for most of the journey, which is good, because Lan drives like a tiny maniac; Wei has to keep his arms wrapped around her waist to stop himself from falling off the bike. If he had a capacity for fear, he'd be terrified. And even with the painkillers, he still feels like he's being shanked in the ribs whenever Lan goes over a pot hole. He decides that he's too old for all of this. He doesn't want a revolution any more. He wants a bowl of congee and a nap.

They reach a valley some time in the late evening. One of the surviving airships is tethered at the bottom of it; the gas envelope is just visible within a cluster of trees. It's dark, but Wei can make out the figures darting around the airship's bulk, marked by the glow of their goggles. 

Lan switches the bike's headlamp on and off a few times to identify herself. From the ship, another light signals back. The bike is allowed to drive straight up into the loading bay. As they pass through the hatch, Wei spots some battle damage on the airship's port side - a few long rents in one of the engine casings - and hopes that it won't be a problem.

Once they're safely inside, Lan quickly dismounts, hopping off the bike with enviable ease and flashing more leg than is strictly ladylike. Wei tries to follow her, but movement requires a degree of planning; he has to pause and try to think of a good way to straighten his shoulders that won't make him want to scream. Out the corner of his eye, he sees Lan stare at him. She then glances around to make sure that no one is watching, and discreetly offers an arm for support.

Wei manages to get upright and on his feet just in time as the ship's captain, Gansukh, jogs into the loading bay. The first words out of her mouth are, "Where's Amon?"

"Missing," says Wei. "Continue with the contingency plan."

Gansukh scowls. "What happened? First Jiru sent us the message that Amon was dead, then Amaguk sent us the message that Amon was captured, then we got something about waterbenders, then we saw the signal that the air field was gone, and then you sent the order to retreat. What's going on?"

Wei is very tempted to tell her that he doesn't have a clue. "It's complicated. Just continue with the contingency plan." 

Gansukh doesn't budge. All she does is take a cigarette box from her shirt pocket, draw a toothpick from it, and pop the toothpick in her mouth. Her eyes remain on Wei's face the entire time.

Fucking Gansukh. She's always done whatever Sato asked, but whenever Wei tells her to do a thing, she gets an attitude problem. (And which bright spark decided that Wei's escape route would involve passage aboard Gansukh's ship? It was Sato, wasn't it? Thank you, Sato, you useless sack of lard.)

"Continue with the contingency plan. That was an order," Wei adds. If Gansukh wants an explanation, tough shit. Right now, he's incapable of explaining how he puts his own socks on, never mind anything to do with Amon.

Gansukh takes a deep breath, then turns away and heads back to the bridge.

Lan is busy making sure the bike is stowed away. She waits until Gansukh is out of earshot, then tells Wei, "You should lie down."

That's not a terrible idea, actually. Wei goes to a corner of the loading bay and sits on the floor. He uses his sleeve to wipe the sweat off his face. 

Lan gives one last tug on a ratchet strap, ensuring that the bike is fastened to a bracket on the wall, and then she wanders after Wei. She crouches by his side, hugging her knees. "Will you now tell me what happened?" she murmurs.

Wei can't.

Wei has known Lan for four years, ever since they dealt with the firebender who was 'protecting' the lab where she worked. She's not the only medic in the organisation - heck, she's not even the best medic in the organisation - but she's easily Wei's favorite, given that she's small and quiet and non-judgmental and useful and has managed to pass numerous background checks. 

He doesn't have the guts to tell her the truth. He'll break her heart, and then she'll break his by accusing him of lying. And then she'd tell others, and he's not sure if he's smart or charismatic enough to keep them from turning on him...

But if he doesn't tell her the truth, then what? The truth will have to come out sooner or later.

"Boss?" Lan prompts, very quietly.

"I'm not sure, kiddo," Wei says. "I'm sorry."

Lan lets out a little sigh, and stands up, bracelets chiming. "I'm going to fetch you a blanket. What should I tell Gansukh if she asks me what happened?"

"Tell her that, uh..." Of course, Wei can't think of anything.

"I'll tell her that you're high on painkillers and not making any sense." 

"Hey, I'm pretty coherent."

Lan just raises her eyebrows. "Look, tell me if you have any nausea, difficulty breathing, numbness in your limbs, the usual, alright?"

Wei's had concussions before, and he's had suspected spinal injuries before. He can't remember his back ever hurting this bad, though. But even if he is horribly fucked up, what can any of them do about it right now? "Yeah, sure," he says. 

"If you fall asleep, I'm going to wake you up every so often to check on you," Lan warns, walking to the bridge.

"Uh, yeah, no," says Wei. "That's going to be fucking annoying. Don't bother."

Lan pauses and looks back at him. "I have a responsibility."

"I don't think I'm gonna die in my sleep, but if I do die in my sleep, I'll die regardless of whether you keep ruining my nap or not."

"That's not..." Lan begins, and huffs. "Look, don't die in your sleep."

"I'll try not to."

"Good!" Lan says, and marches off.

\--

Sleep comes easily, though. The hard floor feels good against Wei's back.

Lan, annoying little shit that she is, wakes him several times, and every time she wakes him, he tries to sit up and look for Amon before he remembers what happened.

Lan finally leaves him alone after he starts shouting at her. He's not sure what he says, but it's enough to make her go away.

Then he drifts. He dreams that a wolf has stolen his spine, and that he's chasing it through the slaughterhouse district.

\--

Wei shivers. He swallows (his mouth still tastes like blood and plaster), and his ears pop. It takes a moment for his brain to register that he's still in the airship's loading bay; the coldness of the air tells him that they're at a good altitude. Daylight streams through the portholes. The noise of the engines sounds strange, somehow; a little lopsided.

Wei looks around for Amon yet again, then winces. 

He looks around for Lan, instead.

Lan isn't around, though. The only other person present is Gansukh, standing just a few paces away from him - he recognizes her boots before he glances up and sees her scowling face.

What's her problem?

...Oh. Right.

He's sorely tempted to tell her to go fuck herself. He has much more right to be angry than she does, and if she's going to blame him for what happened, then-...

Then what? 

He's injured, and he's disposable. He doesn't have Amon's abilities or Sato's bankroll. All he has is his knowledge of the organisation, and that just makes him a liability. Gansukh might as well just kick him out one of the bomb doors. Heck, maybe the only reason why she hasn't kicked him out of the bomb doors yet is because Lan would kill her for it.

"Mornin," he greets her, pulling his blanket tighter around his shoulders.

Gansukh crouches so they're eye-to-eye, and keeps staring at him, unamused. "We've lost the West Airfield, there's no word from Sato, people are saying that Amon betrayed us, Amaguk's gone quiet, and I've just got word that Yi Rong's dead and half his team is in jail."

Half of this is old news, but the bit about Yi Rong catches Wei off-guard. "Wait. Dead?"

"Jiru told us. The police cut off the escape routes in the Dragon Flats district barely an hour after the rally broke up. Yi Rong's the only death we know about, so far."

Wei last spoke to Yi Rong yesterday morning. He'd been fine just then. The thought of him being dead seems... Well, it seems stupid. If Wei didn't know better, he'd ask Gansukh if she was really sure that Yi Rong was dead, as if there could've been a miscommunication somewhere.

Wei knows he'll hear of more casualties over the next few days.

"How many airships do we have left?" Wei asks.

"Just the Wolong, the Kilat, and the Khagan." And they're already aboard the Khagan, so that makes a grand total of three.

They started off with a fleet of thirty.

Wei wants to pull his blanket over his head. "What kinda state are the Wolong and the Kilat in?"

"They're in better condition than we are. Huang says he's got the second and third chi blocking team aboard with him." Huang's in charge of the Wolong, while the Kilat is captained by some pointy-faced Fire Nation asshole called Takamori. They're Sato's people; Wei's never really had much to do with them, though he knows their histories and their habits. He knows where their families live. He knows enough to believe that they can be trusted.

"Has Huang got, like, everyone on the second and third chi blocking teams? Are they all accounted for?" Wei asks.

"Seems that way. No one's injured, they've not ran into any trouble, and the Wolong's making good time. It's already a few hundred miles ahead of us."

Wei lets himself feel a degree of relief.

"And where are we right now?" he asks.

"Somewhere near the Yi Wen coast."

"How long before we land?" Wei says. If Gansukh's sticking to the plan, then their destination is a small island, codenamed Nightjar, in the southern Earth Kingdom. There, they'll meet up with the remaining airships and have an assembly of sorts.

"Around ten hours, because our second port engine isn't working." Gansukh's eyes narrow, assessing him. "How're you feeling? Lan said you were in a bad way."

Heh, cute; as like she reckons he can't can't tell what she's thinking. (Bomb doors. Short drop to the ocean. No one would ever find his corpse.) "Yeah. I reckon I'm still fit to lead for the time being, though," Wei tells her. "Unless someone else wants the job of being the guy who'll get blamed when things go wrong."

Gansukh keeps watching him. "Can I speak frankly with you?"

"What, you're not speaking frankly already?" Wei says.

Gansukh doesn't even blink. "We're... in a bit of a pickle, aren't we?"

Wei wants to laugh. How's he meant to reply to that? "We just need to follow the contingency plan."

"You have no idea where Amon is, do you?" Gansukh asks.

Nope. And Wei can admit this, or he can come up with some bullshit, but he can't decide which would be the lesser evil.

The thing about Gansukh, though, is that she's always been more loyal to Sato than to Amon. If Wei is honest with her about what happened at the rally, maybe she wouldn't accuse him of lying. That's got to be worth something, even though it doesn't mean he trusts her.

He decides to be frugal with the truth, and answers, "No."

She doesn't look real surprised about this. "What happened?"

"What, at the Arena? Amon went after the Avatar, I went after Amon; next thing I know, I'm picking myself up off the floor." 

"People are going to want answers," Gansukh says.

"Yeah," Wei mutters, "I'm aware of that."

"So what am I meant to tell my crew in the meantime?"

"Use your discretion. It's probably a hell of a lot better than mine right now."

Gansukh's expression darkens slightly, as if he's just confirmed every suspicion she's ever had about him. "Right. I'm currently trying to make an inventory of our remaining materiel. I guess we'll know how we're fixed once that's done."

"Yeah, sure." They have food, fuel, and a few spare vehicles stashed away as a precaution, but the loss of the airfield will really put a dent in their resources. Even if Amon hadn't turned out to be a subhuman piece of shit, it seems likely that they still would've lost the fight. Wei doesn't want to dwell on that right now, though. "You know how many of us are still in fighting condition at this point? How many arrests and casualties do you think we're looking at?" To say nothing of deserters.

"No idea yet."

"Yeah, it's probably too early to be asking that," Wei says. "Hey, listen - is there anyone on this ship who was present at the rally?"

"Sungchul and Guo were."

"How much did they see?"

"Guo was outside. He says he saw the waterbender, if that's what you're getting at."

"Did he get a good look at him?"

Gansukh's expression actually softens very slightly. "Guo had binoculars."

"I'm betting some of the people in your crew have drafting skills. Can any of them do portraits?" 

"Sungchul can. I'll go ask him." Gansukh doesn't seem perplexed by his questions. That's a good sign.

"Yeah, please. Y'know, while things are still fresh in people's memory," Wei says.

Gansukh stands up - only pausing to take a half-chewed toothpick from behind her ear and put it between her teeth - and gives Wei a grudging nod. Then she turns and climbs back up the stairs to the upper deck, taking the steps two at a time.

Well, that conversation could've gone a lot worse. 

Wei just sits on the floor for a while, fighting the temptation to lie back down and stay there until someone trips over him. 

His back hurts.

Yes, he going to blame everything on that. His back hurts. That's why he's not in his right mind. His back hurts. No wonder he can't think clearly. His back hurts. 

He decides that he'd better try moving around. Moving around is always a good idea, because it proves that all your limbs are still functional. With a bit of effort and a lot of swearing, he gets to his feet, leans against the wall for a few minutes, then goes to where Lan's bike is stowed. He hunts through the bike's pannier until he finds the wooden box he recovered earlier. 

Then he rests the box on the bike's seat and tells himself to stop being such a fucking sadsack.

Inside the box are a some stacks of bills, a few chunks of platinum, fake identity papers, a cheap carving of a dragon, and a folded-up shirt. The shirt is just a simple, homespun thing, unwashed; Wei picks it up, begins to unfold it, then changes his mind.

What now?

Wei reminds himself that he's been in situations far worse than this and, so long as he manages to avoid prison and the triads, his circumstances aren't that bad. So people have let him down - so what? That's happened before. He's had injuries that were just as bad as this. He can still walk and - so far - he's still free, so he's doing okay, all things considered.

No one's entitled to a life free from misery. The world is filled with all sorts of horrible shit, and its only luck that keeps you out harm's way. A broken heart - and that's all it should be, really (not something soul-destroying, because that's giving Amon too much credit) - isn't _that_ bad.

But is it enough to keep him going: the thought that, hey, it could be worse? And he's got a pretty clear idea of what 'worse' would entail, and it doesn't exactly make him feel better about things.

And now he's like an idiot teenager again, asking questions that can't be answered. He imagines how dumb he must look: some stringy old guy clutching an unwashed shirt and sulking.

Eight years, though. He'd been with Amon for eight years. 

(He's going to castrate that bastard.)

He's fairly sure that he's incapable of being any more pathetic than he is right now, although the day is young.

He puts the folded shirt back in the box.

Then he stands up, wipes his face on his sleeve, puts the box back in the bike pannier, and begins to climb the stairs to the upper deck.

He hopes more than anything that Amon is still alive.

\---

Once he's got the materiel inventory from Gansukh, Wei reads over it in the quiet of the loading bay. He's already starting to think of the place as his turf, while the ship's bridge belongs to the Khagan's crew. It helps that the loading bay is relatively roomy. He needs space. 

He reads Gansukh's impeccable handwriting, and takes notes. He calculates how long their fuel reserves will hold out if all the surviving airships travel so many miles per day. Then he calculates how long their food rations will last. He gives it about two weeks. 

(They're going to need help. Problem is, the only person who's likely to help them by this point is the shipping magnate, and Wei would rather eat his own fist than talk to the shipping magnate.)

They have three airships left, and eight planes. The airships aren't carrying much kit because their main priority was the bombing run. Fuck knows where most of the other vehicles have ended up. A few teams have sent word that they're okay despite still being stuck in the United Republic, but it looks like most of the chi blockers are either 1) captured or 2) (hopefully) sensible enough to ditch their equipment and go incommunicado. 

There are extra supplies and vehicles stashed in various places, although it's only a matter of time before someone reveals their locations to the police. If the authorities have Sato, then Wei has to assume they know everything he does. People usually crack sooner than you'd think.

Wei sits on the floor of the Khagan's loading bay, and wonders how long Amon would last, if the United Forces got to him.

He wonders how long he'd last, if if the United Forces got to him.

Actually, fuck it, no, the prospect of getting caught isn't even up for consideration. Getting caught is not an option. It is not a feasible eventuality. It is not an acceptable outcome. Getting caught is not something that will happen to Wei during his lifetime. 

There's no point thinking about it.

Instead, maybe he'd be better off worrying about the threat posed by his fellow Equalists. The moment he opens his mouth and starts claiming that Amon is a bloodbender, a lot of them are going to go lose their shit. He wouldn't blame them for it, either.

Should he ditch everybody as soon as they reach the mainland? That'd be the cowardly option. But if he stays, what does he have to offer? All he'll do is create controversy. 

Controversy seems inevitable, though. 

If he's honest, he can admit that the organisation is probably screwed, and he hasn't got the brains or resources to salvage anything from this whole mess. Despite what people say about him, he does know how to pick his battles. There's no point in trying to hold the Equalists together. That'd be a fool's errand. And already has another fool's errand that he'd rather pursue instead: he wants to find Amon.

In the meantime, he still needs to figure out how much he should tell the others.

He tries to compile a mental list of people he knows he can trust. It's a short list. All the people he considers 'loyal' are the same people who'd react badly if he told them Amon was a bloodbender. There are a handful of individuals who wouldn't be angry if he told them the truth; they'd just think he was confused. Though, hell, maybe he's underestimating them. Maybe some of them would believe him if he made a good case. But he doesn't know. It's a risk. And if they call him a liar, he'll has to live with that. He'll have to look them in the eye and be honest with them, then stand there and take it when they accuse him of being a traitor.

What if he is wrong about Amon, anyway? What if the guy who attacked him wasn't Amon at all? 

...Nah. It'd take a lot of rationalization for him to believe that the guy wasn't Amon. It's not like he hasn't had suspicions about Amon before. Which is further proof that he's an idiot: he had doubts, but he didn't do anything about them. Maybe he brought all of this on himself. 

Dwelling on this shit isn't helping. He's already too quiet, too passive. He's meant to be in control of things. The organisation has suffered under enough bad leadership already. People will be looking to him for solutions.

He wants to get very, very drunk.

"Boss?" Lan asks, out of nowhere.

Wei flinches, caught off-guard. He didn't hear Lan approach; she must've removed her jewellery. (Why? What's she up to? Why does she need to sneak around?) Lan is now standing a few paces away, chewing the end of her braid again. 

"Yeah?" Wei says.

Lan looks over her shoulder, then crouches in front of him so they're almost eye to eye. "This is going to sound paranoid, but..."

Nothing would sound paranoid to Wei any more. "What?"

"I don't like Gansukh," Lan says. Her crew keeps watching me, like they think I don't notice."

"Oh." Yeah, that figures. Gansukh would have to go through Lan if she wanted to get to Wei, and the risk of a mutiny seems pretty high right now. If Wei claims that Amon is a bloodbender, people can use it as an excuse to kick his ass. However, if Wei doesn't admit that Amon is a bloodbender, then they might just as well kick his ass anyway. 

It all depends on how smart people will want to be about things, though. If people are sensible, then they won't try anything just yet. It's going to look suspicious as hell if something happens to him while he's aboard Gansukh's ship. Gansukh doesn't have anything to gain by attacking him at this point; she can afford to be patient. 

"I'll go talk to her," Wei tells Lan, and stands up, very carefully. (Why did he ever think it was a good idea to sit down? He feels like his entire spine got slammed in a door.) Lan offers him a shoulder to lean on, and he has to take a moment to compose himself.

He catches Lan looking at him, and her face is pale and sad. 

And, well, shit. If he's going to be telling the truth to anyone, then Lan should be the first to know. (He's meant to trust her, isn't he?)

"Hey," he says, "You know earlier, when I said I couldn't remember what happened?"

"Yeah?" Lan replies, cautiously.

"I lied."

"Ah."

"I got attacked," Wei says.

Lan waits for him to elaborate, eyebrows raised.

Wei can't do it. He can't tell the truth.

It's like someone's jammed a wrench into one of the cogs inside his skull. He can almost hear grinding noises. 

"Hey, Lan," he says, quieter now.

"Yes?"

"Slap me."

Lan eyes him.

"Just... Just slap me, alright?" Wei says. You know when you have a machine that's not working properly, and you hit it? Maybe that works on people.

Lan takes a small step backwards, raises her left hand, looks at her left hand, looks back at Wei, then gives him the saddest little slap he's ever received. It's like being swatted by a kitten.

"That was pathetic," Wei says.

"Sorry."

"Try again."

Lan tries. This time, it actually stings a little.

"Oh come on, Lan," Wei laments. "Do it properly. Don't try to hit me; try to hit through me, like you're trying to slap something that's over my shoulder and my head just happens to be in the way."

Lan now squares her shoulders. "No. You have a concussion and you're being weird."

"Dammit, Lan."

"So who attacked you?" Lan asks.

"What?"

"A moment ago, you said someone attacked you."

"Yeah, I..." The more he talks, the more absurd he sounds. "Look, how much have you heard already? What're the rumors going around?"

"I don't know. I've been listening to Gansukh's crew. They say Amon went missing after the Avatar turned up at the rally, and that we lost contact with Hiroshi Sato at around the same time."

"Did they mention what the Avatar said at the rally?"

"Something about Amon being a bloodbender."

"Well," Wei says. "I got bloodbent."

Lan stares at him, long enough for Wei to count three breaths. Then she looks over his shoulder, chews her upper lip, and shifts her weight from one foot to the other.

"Okay," she replies, in one drawn-out breath. Okaaaay.

"Look, don't..." Wei begins, about to say 'don't look at me like I'm a whackjob'. In all fairness, he probably IS a whackjob, but that doesn't mean he's a liar. "...I really did get bloodbent."

Lan keeps staring.

"I know what I'm saying," Wei tells her. "And I know what it sounds like."

Now Lan looks thoughtful. "Did you get a good look at your attacker?"

"Lan. Listen. If I had any doubts about this, I wouldn't be talking about it. Why would I be saying this stuff if I didn't think it was the truth?"

Lan holds up both her hands like she wants to ward him off. "Okay, okay. But, with all due respect, that's the thing: you think you're telling the truth. I mean, what did you see, exactly?"

"Right. There's the rally. We're on stage. The Avatar turns up, right? The Avatar and the, I dunno, her boyfriend, y'know, that kid with a head that's shaped like a zongzi. They attack, the airbenders get loose, Amon goes after the Avatar, I go after Amon," Wei says. "Anyway, I'm a few steps behind, a few paces away from the storage room, and everything goes quiet. I stop running. I get all paranoid that maybe the Avatar is being used as bait, and that maybe I'm walking into an ambush. I walk right up to the storage room, and there's the Avatar getting bloodbent."

Lan's expression remains blank.

Wei adds, without pausing for breath, "I'd recognize Amon anywhere, right? I know we're talking about a guy in a mask, but if I thought I saw an impostor or something, I'd say so. Saying that I saw an impostor and not Amon would make things easier for me. And look at all the shit that's just weird. Look at all the coincidences. Like when we went to apprehend Councilman Tarrlok, and we all got bloodbent except for Amon. And then Amon goes and keeps the Councilman separate from the other prisoners, and no one was allowed to have any contact with him because he was 'a special case due to his involvement with the Task Force' or whatever; whenever I tried to talk to him about it, he just shot me down or changed the subject. Amon was always good at changing subjects, but anyway... Then the Avatar turns up and claims that Amon and Tarrlok are related, and... Fuck it, I don't know, but if it walks like a bloodbender, swims like a bloodbender, and quacks like a bloodbender, I'm gonna assume it's a bloodbender."

Lan takes a moment to process that last sentence. Probably imagining a quacking bloodbender.

"So you're saying Amon attacked you?" she asks, slowly. 

Wei wants to kick something, but pauses to consider the question. "Actually, I tried to attack him. I must've got about three steps before he just picked me up and threw me, I guess."

Lan doesn't immediately reply, but sits down on the floor, propping her elbows on her knees and resting her chin on her hands.

Eventually, she says, "This is... I don't know. If anyone else was saying this stuff except you, we'd have to... uh, do something about them."

Wei laughs uneasily. "Yeah. I know." 

"Like, if I thought Amon bloodbent me, and I came to you and claimed that Amon was a bloodbender, then... It'd be a much shorter conversation, wouldn't it?" Lan gives him a hard look.

Wei grimaces. "I'm sorry. I don't know what else I can tell you. You want to call me a traitor or a hypocrite, go right ahead." 

Maybe the organisation should deal with Wei as they'd deal with any other dissenter. Maybe that would only be fair. Maybe he deserves a mutiny.

"I can't believe he'd attack you, though," Lan murmurs, glancing away.

"I can," says Wei - and as he hears himself speak, he gets a nasty little insight into just how bitter he is. It occurs to him that he's pretty much a dried-out cat turd of a human being and there's nothing in him except hatred, and then dismisses that thought, because it's not real helpful right now. 

Lan shakes her head. "You're really sure it wasn't the Avatar who-"

"Yeah. Like I said, I saw her getting bloodbent. I don't think she could fake something like that. You know that, uh, that poison you make from trees?"

"I, um - which one? Most of my poisons are made from trees."

"The people that makes people contort into weird shapes and start shaking. That one. Y'know, the one you used on those triple threat goons last year, and then you said you'd never gonna use it again because it gave you nightmares. That's what bloodbending looks like. That's what the Avatar looked like. Normal human beings don't move that way. Spines aren't meant to bend like that. Look, I remember this shit vividly. I'm not just confused 'cos I hit my head."

Lan lets out a huge sigh. Wei wishes she'd stand up, because she looks especially small and mousy and pathetic while sitting down. Wei feels like he's a parent who's just had to tell his daughter that, sorry, mommy and daddy don't love each other any more because mommy ran away with the door-to-door brush salesman. _Great_ , he thinks, _there's no way she'll grow up to be a well-adjusted young woman now_ , and he has to suppress a nauseous chortle because Lan is all of twenty-six years old. 

"So what now?" Lan murmurs.

"Now I got to go talk to Gansukh," Wei says.

Lan stands up, and smooths down her skirt. Her eyes look a little vacant. "Okay. Right."

"Can you keep your shit together, Lan?"

Lan looks up at him, and nods once.

"Good." Wei says.

Lan seems to focus slightly. "You're not... I mean, you're going to tell Gansukh that Amon's a bloodbender, aren't you?"

"I'm gonna have to say something about Amon, and it's always easiest to tell the truth. Why?"

"I don't... I don't know."

"You still think I could be wrong?"

Lan's expression goes vacant again.

Wei smiles a little. "I'm kinda asking you to choose between me and Amon here, aren't I?"

"I wasn't at the rally," Lan says. "I didn't see what happened."

"Yeah, I know. I'm not mad at you. I'd probably say the same if I was in your situation," Wei says. "I still need to tell Gansukh what I saw, though."

"What if she uses it against us?" Lan asks.

"I doubt I'll be telling her anything that she doesn't suspect already."

"Yeah, but if you tell her Amon's a bloodbender, then that's an actual admission of..." Lan pauses, and seems to lose her train of thought. "Of something."

Wei shrugs. "Hey, Lan?"

"Yeah?"

"If things turn ugly and I get scapegoated for all the bullshit that's gone down over the past few days, then I want you to focus on your own survival. Side against me, if that's what it takes." Wei isn't sure if he's saying this because he means it, or if he's just gauging her reaction.

Lan scowls, which is an improvement over the glassy-eyed look she had a moment ago. "Seriously? That's horrible. You think I'd do that?"

"I don't know. But I wouldn't blame you if you did."

Lan is speechless for a moment. She looks like she's about to slap him (properly, this time). Then she angrily sticks a hand down the neck of her dress, digs out a rectangular object, and shoves it at Wei. "Here! Take this."

Well, that's uh... What is she offering, exactly?

Wei stares at the... whatever it is. It looks like a cigarette lighter - one of the fancier wind-proof ones with the maker's name embossed on one side - but... Wait. Wei's seen similar devices before. It's not a real lighter, it's just a flashbang grenade that's disguised as one. You arm the things by spinning the flint wheel. "What the fuck, Lan," Wei says. "Why are you still keeping explosives in your under-things? We had a conversation about this already. I told you. One of these days you're gonna blow a titty off."

"I just figured you might need a grenade," Lan says, "Just in case."

Wei takes the grenade from her, partly for her own safety. "I'm not gonna throw grenades at my own people."

"Hold out your hands," Lan snaps.

Wei sighs, and does so.

Lan reaches into her left sleeve. She takes out: a pocket watch, a tube of lipstick, a pack of cigarettes and a cigarette holder, and some candy wrapped in colorful foil. She dumps the items on Wei's palms.

"I'm guessing I shouldn't eat the candy," Wei mutters.

"The green ones are okay. The red ones aren't."

"Why not?"

"Because they're aniseed flavor. Also they contain a heavy sedative."

"What about the green ones?"

"They're lime. They're alright."

Wei just pockets the candy. "And the rest of it?"

"The cigarette holder is a dart gun; there's a dart inside that's tipped with a muscle relaxant. Don't smoke the cigarettes; they trigger psychosis. Um, except for the cigarette in the back, the one that's a different way around to all the others. That one explodes. The lipstick has a hidden compartment with a powdered sedative in it. The watch... also explodes. But only if you turn the dial to midday."

"The watch explodes?" 

"Yeah."

"The watch doesn't release a toxic gas or fire needles at people's eyes or anything like that?"

"No. It just explodes."

"Just checking." One has to be sure of these things. "Do you have any other explosives on your person?"

"Only a few."

Wei looks up at the ceiling of the loading bay as if he'll find the courage to be strong up there. "You know, Lan, don't you ever worry about what'd happen if you... tripped and fell downstairs or something?"

Lan's scowl is replaced by a thoughtful expression. "That hasn't happened yet."

Wei sticks the items in the pockets of his pants. Maybe this is a bad idea, but then again, it's hardly the first time he's had dangerous things way too close to his crotch.

He squints at Lan for a long moment, then trudges up the steps to the bridge.


	4. Winter, ASC 170

The Khagan's bridge is like the inside of a greenhouse - stuffy, bright, and warm - and the bridge window is filled by the grey-blue sky. There's the faint yet persistent whiff of electronics and old socks.

Gansukh is standing near the wheel, talking quietly with her helmsman, who's some short Water Tribe-looking guy with a round, earnest baby seal face. It takes Wei a moment to recall the guy's name, but he's pretty sure that he's is called... Siluk, or something. Everyone in the organization needs to wear a name badge; Wei's memory isn't getting any better. He's been hit in the head a lot during his lifetime.

Gansukh and Siluk keep talking as Wei approaches. Wei is a little gratified to discover that, rather than scheming to overthrow him, they're just discussing the merits of various hangover cures. 

"Captain?" Wei says.

Gansukh glances over, then turns to face him, straightening her shoulders. "Yes, sir?"

"I'd like to call a meeting."

For a second, it almost looks like Gansuhk is going to follow the order without question - she nods once, and glances towards the speaking tube - but then she says, "Alright. Are you going to tell us what's going on now?"

Lan is behind Wei's left shoulder and out of sight, but Wei swears she's holding her breath. 

Wei scratches his chin, and looks out the bridge's window. "Well..." he begins. Shit this is awkward. "You've heard what people are saying about Amon being a waterbender, right?"

Gansukh opens her mouth to speak, pauses, and gives Wei a sudden look of understanding. Her expression turns ugly.

"You," she says. "How long have you known?" 

Lan takes a small step forward, putting herself at the edge of Wei's vision.

"What?" Wei says, and takes a moment to figure out what Gansukh is implying. She's clearly had time to listen to the rumor mill over the ship's radio. "I've known he was a bloodbender since yesterday, 'cos, uh, that'd be _when he fucking bloodbent me._ You think I'd knowingly associate with someone like that?”

"You were the one closest to him," Gansukh says. "You must've suspected something."

"There wasn't anything I could prove," Wei says. "And even if I had proof, how many people wouldn't have believed it anyway?"

Gansukh keeps staring at him for a while longer. Then, for a split second, she glances to Lan, then uncurls her hands and breathes out.

"Why didn't you tell me about Amon when you first boarded my ship?" Gansukh asks.

"Because we had other priorities. If I had told you back then, what difference would it've made?" Wei says.

"It would've showed me you were honest."

Wei considers turning around and walking away, but he's not sure where he'd actually go, given how he's stuck on an airship and all. "Yeah, well, I'm being honest with you now. Look, if you don't trust me, fine. I'm not entitled to anyone's trust, especially not after what's happened. You've got good reason to be pissed off and, you know, fuck it, I don't know what to say to you. But I don't want to fight you over any of this. It'd be pointless." And messy. If they got into a brawl on the Khagan's bridge, the fight'd be all elbows and fists everywhere and people getting their faces smashed against all the pointy brass fixtures, and Lan might randomly explode because she's smuggling nitroglycerin in her drawers or whatever.

Gansukh crosses her arms. She exchanges a glance with Siluk, who keeps his mouth shut and maintains a neutral expression.

"I'm... not happy about the way things have turned out," Gansukh says, like that isn't obvious. Still, Wei finds it reassuring that her anger seems genuine. There's nothing cool or calculating about her right now. She's just some poor asshole who's sacrificed her career for nothing (and it was a pretty good career, truth be told) and is now responsible for an airship full of fugitives. If Wei could bother to waste empathy on people who hated him, he'd feel sorry for her.

"Well, at least you believe Amon’s a bloodbender," Wei says.

Gansukh draws another deep breath, as if she's counting to ten. "What do you intend to do next?"

Get drunk and cry. Turn heterosexual. Throw myself off a cliff. "Guess I'm gonna have to find him and make him eat his teeth," Wei says. "Assuming I can get to him before anybody else does."

"Well, if Amon's missing, we have to get to him first," says Gansukh; she's already smoothed some of the emotion out of her voice. "It's bad enough that we've lost Mr. Sato already."

Yeah, that'll be a problem. Sato should offer some resistance when questioned, but Amon has shown himself to be the sort of person who'd likely sell them all out in a heartbeat. He's just a special kind of asshole, an asshole who goes above and beyond the requirements of regular assholery.

"I got some ideas for tracking Amon down. I just need to survive long enough to see my plans through," Wei says, then carefully straightens his back so he's standing at his full height. "Actually, let me ask you, Gansukh: what do you intend to do next? Because my gut feeling is that the organization'll fracture. At the very least, we're gonna end up with two groups: the people who think Amon's a bloodbender, and people who think he isn't. And when everybody realizes that the organization's gonna split, they'll make a grab for any materiel that's left over, and then they'll try to form their own little cliques so's they can do their own thing. So what's your next move?"

Gansukh looks out the window. "You've read the inventory I gave you, I take it?"

"Yeah. I know we're on borrowed time."

Gansukh gives a distracted nod. "My main concern is money. I don't need to tell you how much it costs just to maintain this ship. And I'm not interested in... In politics. I'm willing to believe that Amon was, well, ah... Well, I'm willing to believe that he lied to us. I'm not going to waste time arguing about it with anyone. My goal is survival."

Money. Right. There are still a few backers who they could approach, but shit, Amon's left them all looking like a bunch of chumps. Wei might have to swallow his pride and grovel (so maybe it's fortunate that he doesn't have a lot of pride left). There's only one guy who's still likely to lend them money in a pinch without question, and that's the shipping magnate. And the shipping magnate is 1) a scumbag, and 2) easily the most annoying person Wei has ever met, so-

Gansukh interrupts Wei's train of thought. "I'll help you find Amon because I don't like loose ends," she says. "However, if you catch him... Then what?"

"I'll kill him," Wei says, without hesitation.

"You're not going to ask him why he did, uh... what he did?" Gansukh asks.

"Nah. Some guys don't have a why. I'm just gonna kill him quickly and be done with it. Last thing I want to do is hear that bastard talk again."

Gansukh scratches the side of her neck, mulling over this, then shrugs. "Killing him is much easier than trying to take him alive. How're you going to prove it's him, though?"

"I know his boot size and his measurements for armor. I figure that'll do."

"Ugh. That's a little..." Gansukh begins, then glances to Lan as she addresses Wei. "...I mean, given that we're dealing with such a dangerous individual, how will that work in practice? For a start, how are you going to track him down?"

"I've got some clothes with his scent on them, and I know a shirshu tracker who can be trusted," Wei says. "However, that'll have to wait a while. Right now, I'm more concerned with what I'll say to the other guys when we land. I need to explain all this shit to people without them lynching me."

Gansukh exchanges looks with Siluk.

"If I was you," she offers, "I wouldn't try to explain anything. The others will have heard the rumors by now. A lot of them will have already made up their minds as to whether Amon's a bloodbender or not. And it'll be a lose-lose situation for you: either you'll look like a liar, or you'll look like a dupe."

Wei fights back a pang of anger at her honesty. "Yeah, don't I know it. But I have to say something. Silence would be worse."

"Can I make a suggestion?"

Wei inwardly grimaces. "Go ahead."

"What we you didn't meet up with the other cells, but kept going south to one of the other fuel reserves?" Gansukh says.

Wei eyes her. "And how would you explain that?"

"We could just tell people that we thought the assembly point had been compromised, and that we'd contact them once we were sure it was safe to do so."

"So you'd lie to them."

Gansukh's façade slips, and she looks genuinely angry again. "Oh come on, what's one more lie? We're all in this situation because Amon lied to us, and we lied to ourselves. Everything's just varying degrees of denial at this point."

Wei glances to Lan, to see how she's faring. Lan is looking at the floor, dejection plain on her face.

"Lan?" Wei prompts. "What do you think?"

"I don't feel qualified to comment, sir," Lan murmurs. 

Lan rarely ever calls Wei 'sir'.

Wei considers things. In all fairness, Gansukh has a point. If he tells the other Equalists that Amon's a bloodbender, he's going to look like the world's biggest asshole. You can't just go up to a bunch of people and admit that their leader is a fraud. Wei's hurt people for saying less than that.

But Wei follows Gansukh's suggestion and postpones meeting up with the other cells, then what? He'll be stuck aboard the Khagan with her, isolated from the rest of the organization. And he has no idea what she might tell (or what she's already told) the others. 

"So, lemme get this right, Gansukh," Wei says. "A moment ago, you were bitching at me for not telling you the truth as soon as I boarded your ship. But now you're suggesting I lie to everyone else?"

Gansukh opens her mouth, but hesitates a little too long before speaking. 

Wei cuts her off. "For your sake, I'm gonna assume that you're just saying stupid shit because you're angry and under stress. 'Cos I like to have good faith in people, and I know you wouldn't want to compromise the safety of your crew. Right, Lan?"

He hates having to use Lan as a crutch like this, but she's the only person on the ship who'd be useful in combat right now. She's the only leverage he's got.

Lan lifts her head, and gives Gansukh a speculative look.

Siluk keeps his gazed fixed on the skies ahead, but leans away from Gansukh ever so slightly.

Gansukh carefully adopts a blank expression. "Well, it was a suggestion. You saw how I reacted when you confirmed that Amon was a bloodbender. You must know that others might react a little more... dramatically than I did. And you said yourself that it'll probably be everyone for themselves from this point onwards."

"Even so, I think we'll stick with the contingency plan so's I can let people know what happened," Wei says.

Gansukh just nods. "Of course. I can tell you that the Wolong and the Kilat already reached the meeting point a few hours ago. Captain Takamori says the area is secure."

"Alright." For her sake, Gansukh had better be telling the truth. "In the meantime, I'd like a word with Sungchul and Guo," Wei says.

"Certainly. I was wondering when you'd ask," Gansukh says, and turns to the speaking tube. Finally.

\--

The bridge gets kind of cosy with Sungchul and Guo in it.

Guo is the crew's navigator. How Guo ended up becoming a navigator, Wei has no idea, because Guo looks like a platypus bear that's been shaved and cruelly forced to wear human clothes. Maybe the Khagan had a proper human-sized navigator at some point, but Guo ate him and took his place.

Sungchul's relatively nondescript. The worst thing Wei can say about Sungchul is that Sungchul might be using engine grease as hair pomade.

Wei wedges himself into a corner, and watches as Sungchul squeezes past Guo to take a seat at the navigator's table, quickly getting to work with some paper and charcoal. 

Guo looms over Sungchul's shoulder as he draws. Guo insists that the eyes need to be further apart, the mouth needs to be broader (but not that broad), the cheekbones are flatter, the nose isn't that big, and so on. They enjoy a brief argument over the shape of Amon's chin. The argument is only resolved after Sungchul threatens to shove a charcoal stick up Guo's nose, though he'd probably need a step ladder to achieve this.

Eventually they get a picture that Guo claims is sort of (generally) accurate, and everyone crowds around to look.

"I don't know, though," Sungchul says. "It looks like I just drew a picture of Councilman Tarrlok."

Yeah, Wei can see the likeness. The guy depicted in the sketch has a similar brow. But if the picture was meant to be portrait of the Councilman, then it's a pretty flattering one.

"No, Councilman Tarrlok isn't as, uh..." Gansukh begins, then seems to think very hard about the comment she was about to make.

"Councilman Tarrlok looks more punchable," Guo says. "He has a supremely punchable face. Like a fist-magnet."

"What do you think happened to Councilman Tarrlok, anyway?" Sungchul says as he picks charcoal out from under his nails.

"Last I knew, he was on Air Temple Island," says Wei, then looks to Gansukh. "Right?"

Gansukh shakes her head. "Amaguk told me we'd lost the island about half an hour after things went wrong at the rally, and now no one knows where the Councilman is."

Well shit, Wei is out of the loop. "Didn't the authorities get him when they took the island?"

"The police made a statement about him being missing. I heard it on the radio," Gansukh says. "Of course, whether you want to actually believe the police is another matter."

Tarrlok could've yielded some useful information about Amon, but now he's probably dead or in police custody or he's fucked off back to the Old Country so he can continue to kidnap teenage girls with impunity. Wei sighs. "Does Amon have any other alleged relatives I don't know about?"

"No. Just Tarrlok, according to the media," says Gansukh.

"You sure? He's not got any long-lost second-cousins, no step-siblings, no evil twins or nothing like that? I'm just asking 'cos in the past month I've got jumped by not one but _two_ surprise bloodbenders, and if happens again and it turns out they're all related to each other, I'm going to shit."

Sungchul takes a deep breath "This would be a bad time for me to admit that I'm also actually a bloodbender, right?"

"Crap," says Guo. "So am I."

"Actually," Sungchul adds, looking up at Wei, "We're all bloodbenders. All of us. Except you. Sorry. We were trying to think of a tactful way to tell you, but..."

Wei absolutely does not smile. He has nothing to smile about. "I knew it," he says, grimly. "I'd fight you all, but I got back problems, so if you could just do me a big favor and kick yourselves in the dick, that'd be great, thanks."

Sungchul grins briefly, and taps his charcoal against the table. "And now I'm wondering: how do you fight a bloodbender?"

"Obviously not by running straight at him like I did," Wei says. "Nah, you just need to stay out of their reach. We've been relying on the fact that a lot of benders are weaker at close combat 'cos they're used to making ranged attacks, but with a bloodbender, you obviously can't get all up in their space."

Siluk is still at the helm, watching the clouds, but he helpfully offers, "We could just bomb him."

"That doesn't sound very satisfying, to be honest," Guo says.

"Well, we got to find the guy first," Wei says. "Then we'll see." (But what are they going to do if they can't find him? How long will people be willing to support Wei's little revenge mission?)

"He's probably drunk under a table somewhere," Gansukh mutters, without needing to add, 'that's where I'd be'.

Wei smiles ruefully. "Hm, no, he's not like that. He's probably got everything set up so he can run away and start a new life on Ember Island or whatever."

Lan has been quiet for a while, but now she speaks up. "If I was a bloodbender, I'd go where there's lots of people. Plenty of shields."

Everyone shuts up for a moment to think about that.

"Hey. When you saw the waterbender in the bay, did you see him attack anyone?" Gansukh asks Guo.

Guo shakes his head. "Nope. He just ran. Or... swam, whatever."

"That's odd," Gansukh says, scratching her chin. "If I was him, I would've started hurling civilians at the Avatar."

"That's because you have no capacity for shame, Captain," Guo cheerfully informs her.

Gansukh has a point, though. If Wei was a bloodbender and he had nothing to lose, he'd be pelting hapless bystanders at anyone who dared to get in his way. He'd be twisting people's limbs off for fun. "I don't think shame had anything to do with it," Wei says. "Shame's gotta be a foreign concept to someone who lies to people for years. He's just a coward, that's all. Probably lost his nerve 'cos he suddenly realized he was much dumber and more vulnerable than he thought."

"We don't..." Lan begins, then seems to reconsider what she was about to say. "I mean, I've never seen Amon panic. That doesn't sound like him. Like, even when a situation got out of control, he'd stay calm. He'd adapt."

"He was only human," Wei says. A very quiet, sober human, but human all the same. (Wei remembers the way he smelled, and the weight of his body, and - irritatingly - how gentle he could be when it suited him.) "He's gonna bleed the same as anybody else. I'm not expecting him to be an easy target, but I know we can deal with him. Bloodbending's the kind of technique where the bender's only got a real advantage if they can get the drop on people."

"Amon's human, huh?" Sungchul says, wryly. "Huh."

Wei marks Sungchul's attitude as a potential problem. Wei also wants to wince. Technically, no one had ever claimed that Amon _wasn't_ human - it served the cause if people saw him as an ordinary person who was only marked by fate - but... Well. Amon spoke to spirits. Allegedly.

Ordinary people do not speak to spirits.

Though maybe ordinary people should.

"Yeah, well, what can I tell you?" Wei says, suddenly feeling tired. "We all expected better from the guy." And they all saw what they wanted to see. They're all fuckwits, and Wei is chief of the fuckwit clan.

Everyone is quiet for a moment, although Lan's expression suggests she's biting her tongue to keep her mouth shut.

Wei clears his throat. "Anyway," he says, gesturing to Sungchul's portrait of Amon. "Can I have this?"

"Sure, whatever," Sungchul says, handing the portrait over.

Wei carefully folds up the piece of paper and tucks it into his undershirt.

\---

They arrive at their assembly point, Nightjar island, at dawn the next day, a little behind schedule due to the Khagan's busted engine. Wei stands on the bridge during the approach, just so he can eavesdrop on Gansukh's radio conversations. Gansukh does a pretty good job of ignoring him as much as possible.

The island is covered by trees; there are no signs of human habitation. It crosses Wei's mind that if he died in a place like this, miles from anywhere, no one would ever find his corpse. But then again, so what? It's not like Republic City is much safer; that place has its own share of disappearances. Hell, disappearing isn't even the worst thing that can happen to a guy. (Wei's seen the work of triad earthbenders firsthand. If you hear someone's gone missing, that's bad, but it's still better than than watching their friends and family digging in the dirt with their bare hands while the entire street just watches, too scared to intervene. Six minutes. That's how long they say it takes for a person to suffocate.)

Wei tries to think of something less morbid.

He tells himself that the trees should remind him of the countryside where he grew up. He tells himself that he shouldn't feel lost. 

The city was kind of a shithole, really. Maybe he should be happy if he never has to see it again.

\---

Gansukh signals with the the Khagan's lights to ask for permission to land. Within a matter of minutes, some of the trees part to reveal a clearing, just large enough to accommodate the Khagan's envelope. It looks like the other airships are already out of sight, camouflaged with their surroundings.

The Khagan gently lowers itself to the ground. After the dust settles, Wei looks out the bridge window. The darkness between the trees is absolute.

Fortunately, it isn't long before Takamori, the captain of the Kilat, steps out from the shadows and approaches them. He holds up a hand to signal that it's safe. A few grey silhouettes loiter some way behind him; Wei hopes they're Takamori's crew.

Gansukh and her crew go through a few mandatory post-flight checks before disembarking, though Guo and Siluk remain behind on the ship as a precaution. Wei follows Gansukh; Lan is a step behind him, craning her neck as she looks up at the branches above. 

Takamori comes to greet them. He looks tired and sober; a little relieved to see them, maybe. 

Wei expects Takamori to ask, 'where Amon?', like Gansukh, but instead Takamori just says, "Glad you made it here alright. We're a little short-staffed, but the repairs on your ship should take a day or so. Most of the others are at the listening station."

Wei remembers seeing the plans for the island. There's a machine shop, an underground fuel reservoir, a small dock, some sheds that contain bunks and spare equipment - and yeah, a listening station. He tries to remember the exact layout of the place so he can think up escape routes, but islands aren't exactly known for their escapability.

"You had any trouble, seen anything odd lately?" Wei asks Takamori.

Takamori breathes out an awkward chuckle. "Well, I... I'll tell you later. But we got here without running into trouble, and the island's secure."

Hmm.

Lan glances over her shoulder, back at the Khagan.

Wei gives Takamori a sideways look. "Tell me what later?"

"Oh. Uh. We saw lights under the sea when we were passing by the Haetae Isles awhile back," Takamori says. "Big lights. Could've been a school of fish, I don't know, but..." He shrugs. "We're pretty close to the Winter Solstice, so I figured, maybe..."

"You saw a sea monster?" Wei says flatly.

"Could've been the Haetae," Lan mutters. "Do Haetae swim?"

Takamori gives another quick shrug, smiling nervously.

Wei considers asking further questions, but decides against it. He wonders what a sea monster would taste like. Maybe the Equalists will have to take up fishing if they can't secure a proper income within the next few weeks.

They pass under the canopy of trees to the flimsy metal hut that houses the listening station. The building looks like it'd fall over if Wei sneezed on it. Apparently Sato didn't have much money left after building all those platinum mecha tanks.

As they near the shed, Wei spots a few members of the third chi blocking team milling around. They're still wearing their uniforms, including their masks.

Why are they still wearing their masks?

Wei looks back over his shoulder, but there's just the heavy velvet curtain darkness of the forest.

He glances over at Gansukh. She looks back at him, a little wide-eyed, but doesn't say anything. Lan is just a step behind her, although she's still peering at the branches above.

You know when you fall, and you get that sick anticipation of the impact right before the ground hits you? That's the feeling he gets.

Even so, he still steps into the listening station, because he doesn't fancy trying to run back to the Khagan at this point. 

The only person inside is the listening station a bespectacled young woman with large, patient blue eyes and a vulpine Fire Nation-y face. Her hair is tucked under a headscarf, and she's wearing a pair of overalls, but she still manages to look prim. Wei's sure he's seen her before, somewhere, but he knows she's not part of the organization. She's standing by one of the radio sets. She offers a bow.

Wei pauses in the doorway and looks back at Lan, Gansukh, and the rest of the crew. Takamori has made himself scarce. The chi blockers seem to be slightly closer than they were a moment ago. Lan has now clearly noticed them, because her hands are curled into fists. 

The woman in the listening station gives a soft little 'ahem'. "Sir? No one means you any harm," she tells Wei, like he's meant to believe that.

Wei keeps his attention on Lan, and gives her a 'don't you fucking dare, young lady' sort of look. There is a time and a place for Lan's methods, and this isn't it. She'd better not do anything stupid. Wei's the only person here who has the privilege of making terrible decisions. And while he has no idea what they're dealing with yet, instinct tells him that it isn't the triads or the United Forces. Otherwise things would be a lot messier.

Lan lets out a small sigh.

Wei considers the woman in the listening station again.

"My employer would just like a word with you," the woman says. "Everything is already set up."

There's a chair by the radio set. The woman gestures to it.

Wei slowly approaches the radio set, but prefers to stand. Someone closes the door behind him, and Wei fights back a wave of nausea. He does the best to ignore the unhelpful little voice in his head that's telling him he's just made his last mistake.

"What the fuck's going on?" Wei asks the woman. He wonders if these will be his last words. They'd be fitting. Someone should put them on his gravestone, if he ever gets a gravestone, which doesn't seem very likely by this point.

The woman doesn't blink. "My employer will explain."

Wei goes to open the listening station's door again.

"This needs to be a private conversation," the woman says.

"Why?"

"As I said, my employer will explain everything."

"What if I don't want to talk to them?"

"You will."

"Why?"

"What other options do you have?"

"I always have options," Wei says, because that's technically true, although sometimes those options are pretty stupid, like 'sit on the floor and sulk while refusing to speak to anybody'.

"If you speak to my employer," the woman says, slowly, "it can't make your situation any worse."

"Don't you threaten me," Wei says, and opens the door.

Outside, the Khagan's crew are standing in a little huddle, just out of earshot, muttering to each other. Lan is eyeballing one of the guys in the chi blocker uniforms as if she'd like to put his spleen in a jar, and Gansukh is scowling (though when is she not?), but... They don't look too scared, given the circumstances. Just agitated.

"We're trying to help you," the woman says, behind Wei.

Wei snorts, and doesn't look back at her. "Why?"

"You have valuable information."

"Yeah, no. Not really. Apparently I was just Amon's attack dog and occasional fucktoy. Not that I'm bitter about this," Wei says bitterly. "You want to talk to someone who knows stuff, then go find Sato. Call me if you ever, like, need someone who's good at falling off roofs."

Wei looks back at the woman, and she peers at him, eyebrows raised. "Okay, sir, if you say so, but I'm not going to believe any of that for a second. Please talk to my employer."

Well, whatever. Wei decides that he's willing to talk to this asshole purely out of morbid curiosity. If all else fails, at least he can personally tell them to fuck off.

Wei closes the hut's door again, carefully sits down at the chair by the radio set, and picks up the headphones.

He makes a a mental note of the frequency on the dial, as if that'll count for anything. Then he jabs the transmit button for just long enough to say, "What."

At first there's just the crackle of static, but then a voice comes through: "Testing, testing... You can hear me, right? Over."

The voice is male, and it doesn't have an accent that Wei can place. Like a lot of things in Wei's life, it seems vaguely, frustratingly familiar.

Wei doesn't reply, but looks around the listening station, taking in the corrugated iron walls and the racks of electronics. His gaze settles on the woman: she just stands there, shoulders square, hands clasped behind her back, and looks back at him with cool disinterest. 

"Hee-llo?" says the voice over the radio. "Dammit, is this thing on? Over."

Wei deigns to answer. "I can hear you."

"Great!" says the voice. "Because we need to have a little chitchat. A rap session, if you will. Uh, by the way, if you're not sitting down already, you might want to-"

Wei holds the transmit button down. "Wait." 

The voice sounds like it belongs to a total asshole. Wei goes through the long list of total assholes he's known during his lifetime. It takes him a moment to find the right name, and then... Ah. Shit. It's him. It's that guy.

It's the shipping magnate.

" _You_. What do you want?" Wei growls, before grudgingly releasing the transmit button again.

"Whoa, I'm sensing a lot of hostility here," says the shipping magnate. "Relax, Lieutenant, I'm on your side. I've already done you a bunch of favors already! Do you have any idea how close you got to crossing paths with a United Forces patrol when the Khagan passed the Yiwen coast? PRETTY CLOSE. And do you know who distracted that patrol by deploying a distress flare a few miles north? That's right: ME. So maybe you should be saying 'thank you', because we're both meant to be civilised men capable of having a civilised conversation about civilised things in a civilised manner. Over."

If it wasn't for his bad back, Wei would slowly lean forwards until his head would hit the tabletop with a thunk. He does not like the shipping magnate.

Wei is developing a special contempt for the Water Tribe.

"Hello?" the shipping magnate asks. "Lieutenant? Over."

"What the fuck do you _want_?" Wei repeats.

"Ha ha, c'mon, let's not make this about me. You're much more interesting than I am. I mean, you're a genocidal terrorist. Wait. Sorry. Not a terrorist. 'Revolutionary'. You're a genocidal revolutionary! Doesn't get more interesting than that! I bet you'd be real fun at parties! Except... No one's ever gonna invite you to a party ever again, because EVERYONE HATES YOU. I gotta say, attacking the Air Nomads was a dick move that cost you a lot of sympathy points. Kinda overstepped yourself there, pal. Do you know how easy it was for me to find out your location? You're just lucky I got to you before anybody else did. Over."

Wei presses the transmit button just so he can sigh into the microphone for a whole three seconds. "Okay, don't tell me... I've figured out what you want. You're gonna offer me your protection in exchange for... something, right? Fuck, you're predictable. Over."

"EXACTLY." There's a sound that might be the shipping magnate clapping his hands together. "...Though, sheesh, you make it sound like a bad thing. Don't you want my protection? Or would you rather spend the rest of your days in a prison cell? Because prison looks like the next best scenario! At least in prison, the guards can only hurt you in ways that don't leave obvious injuries, whereas if the triads get their hands on you, then... Well, let's just say that they're gonna enjoy a little more creative freedom. Heck, I don't know, maybe you wouldn't mind prison so much. Maybe you even miss it. Maybe you got kinda... What's the word? Institutionalizeded."

Don't react, Wei tells himself, trying to ignore the nausea gnawing at his gut. He shouldn't be surprised by how much the shipping magnate knows. The shipping magnate is in a different league. The guy has more money than sense.

The shipping magnate continues, "Hey, I hear United Republic prisons are still mostly staffed by earthbenders. Guess things haven't changed much in the past... what, twenty-five years? Over."

Somehow, Wei still manages to keep his voice level, despite the pressing need to commit murder. "You're laying it on kinda thick here, pal. You're not exactly winning me over. Uh. Over."

"Just speaking a language you understand. You got a rep for being real stubborn, you know that? Like pathologically stubborn. Anyway, yeah, you got it: I can offer you protection in exchange for information. Nice and straightforward. Over."

Wei lets out a chuckle that just sounds downright sad. "Right. And how do I know you're not just gonna take the information and then kill me, given how I can identify you and all? Over."

The guy laughs. "Sorry, Lieutenant, but you don't pose THAT much of a threat to me. And I'm a nice guy! I'd prefer to let you live. And you want to live, don't you? Picture it now. New name, new identity. No more hard floors. No more sleep deprivation! No more looking over your shoulder. No more watered-down congee or expired army rations for breakfast. No more broken ribs. Freedom! The central Earth Kingdom's pretty nice around this time of year. You're not getting any younger. How's your back feeling, by the way? You might want to get a proper doctor to look at that. I knew a guy once, accidentally stepped off the side of a fishing trawler and hit the quay below. Just kind of bounced right off it. Anyway, he seemed alright apart from some back pain, kept doing his job as normal... And then, get this, a week later he wakes up and finds that he can't move his legs. Ha HA, spines are weird! Over!"

Well, Wei thought he couldn't hate anyone more than he hated Amon, but he might've been wrong about that.

"If I don't pose a threat to you, then why've you got your goons posted here?" Wei asks. "And what the fuck did you do with my chi blockers?"

"Yeah, don't mind the goons, they're only there to make sure you don't do anything stupid. And... Wait a minute, let me check my notes..." There's the rustle of paper. "...This is the point where I say, 'we can do things the easy way, or we can do things the hard way'. I'm a little concerned that you might choose the hard way, because it's a known fact that you are utterly insane and you want to fight the entire universe, but I also figure that, hey, maybe you're miserable and tired enough to see reason. So what'll you choose, Lieutenant? Over."

Wei closes his eyes. Even if he could get past the goons, he'd still be stuck on this island.

"What did you do with the chi blockers?" Wei repeats.

"They're in the hold of one of my airships. They're okay. Plucky bunch of kids you got there. What's the age of the oldest? Twenty? You get 'em while they're young, huh. Do you hand out free candy during recruitment drives or something? Over."

Wei refrains from telling him to fuck off, the oldest is 25 because that's when people reach their peak performance, and the younger ones are useful because they've picked up fewer bad habits. "They're okay?"

"They're okay. I mean, alright, I think one guy broke a wrist after punching one of my minions in the ol' beanbag, but no permanent harm done. 'Course, it probably helps that they're all under heavy sedation. Can't have them running around and backflipping all over the place. Over."

Wei silently counts to ten, trying to decide if he believes this or not, then asks, "What sort of information do you want?"

"Stuff on your crazy ex, mostly, and... Isn't it funny how everyone has a crazy ex? Hey, do you ever wonder if maybe _you're_ the crazy ex? Like-"

Wei presses the transmit button to cut him off. "You mean Amon?"

"Yeah. Holy moly, Lieutenant, how many crazy exes do you have? Over."

"What do you want with him?"

The magnate tsks. "Okay, I don't think you understand the nature of our relationship: _I'm_ meant to be asking you questions, you're not meant to be asking me questions. But I'll tell you anyway: he's of interest to science. He knows brain things. Over."

"What'll you do with him?"

"Why do you care? Maybe you should be a little less worried about him and a little more worried about yourself. You could still have a pretty good life, pal. You ever heard that living well is the best revenge? Over."

Wei's finger hovers over the transmit button. He doesn't say anything.

The shipping magnate evidently gets bored of waiting for a reply, because there's a click, and he asks,"You want to kill him, right? Over."

Wei still doesn't reply.

"Look, if you give me information on Amon, I'll pay your therapy bill for you," the magnate says, chipper as always. "...Well, so long as it doesn't bankrupt me, anyway. So what do you say? We got a deal or not? Over."

Wei sits there for a while, staring into space, then presses the transmit button and says, "You're a... a fuckhole. Over."

"And you're just rude. No wonder Amon did most of the talking. Imagine if you had to stand on stage and give a little speech. You'd be like, 'my friggin Equalists, the fragging time has come to rid the world of fother mucking bender supremacy, tonight we're going to capture the Avatar and kick her in the fricklefrackle' and so forth. But it's okay, I'm not going to hold it against you. _Do we have a deal?_ "

Wei rubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands. "Can I talk to the others before I commit to anything?"

"Hmmm. Let me think. No."

Wei opens his mouth and almost asks, 'what about the people who came here with me? What are you going to do with them?' but then he stops himself. By revealing that he gives a shit, he'd just be putting them at risk, and it's bad enough that he's showed concern over the chi blockers already.

Still, he asks, "Why not?"

"Don't trust 'em. There were a lot of people willing to sell you out, pal. And you know what, that's fine, I'm not judging them for that, but it doesn't exactly make them look _trustworthy_ , you know? That's why I just want to deal with you. You might hate my guts, but I think you're fundamentally honest and reliable."

"You expect me to believe that?" Wei asks. "You just want to isolate me from the rest of the organization."

"Lieutenant, I don't think you're following me: _I'm_ able to be _here_ , talking to _you_ right now, because people have already ratted on you. It's a dog-eat-dog world, buddy. As I'm sure you're aware. So hey, I guess you're already isolated from the rest of the organization. Sad but true."

Wei glances to the woman in the hut - she's been quiet the whole time - just to see if she's looking at him. He doesn't want anyone seeing his expression right now.

The woman is cleaning her glasses as if she hasn't noticed anything unusual. Wei would like to thank her for her pointed disinterest in him.

He screws his eyes shut for a moment. He has to move forward somehow, he can't afford to pick a fight right now, and he can't stay here in the listening station forever. And it might be worth asking the magnate for the names of all the people who sold him out. Assuming the magnate won't lie, and hasn't lied already.

He presses the transmit button. "Fine. I'll help you. What do you need to know? Over."

"Great! We'll talk more later," the magnate says, blandly. "Out." And then there's just the crackle of static.

The woman puts her glasses back on. 

Wei stares at her and drums his fingers against the radio table.

"Are you going to behave, then?" the woman asks.

"Guess so," says Wei. 

"Good." She moves closer to him, and looks him up and down. "No offense, but you're known for-..."

There's an odd _clank_ somewhere outside, some distance away. The woman pauses. She gives Wei a 'what the hell was that?' kind of look, and he finds some twisted satisfaction in her unease, even though he should probably be just as worried as she is.

"You stay here," the woman says, then moves to the door of the listening station so she can address someone outside. "Excuse me, I need you to pat this gentleman down for weapons and take him to the mainland. Now. Please."

Having said that, she glances back at Wei, tells him, "Don't move," and slips outside the hut, enviably calm and collected. Barely three seconds pass before she's replaced by two burly goons who're still wearing chi blocker uniforms. Cheeky bastards.

Wei slowly stands up, gritting his teeth, and hopes they won't rough him up, otherwise he'll probably cry and puke on them. Sure, they have no reason to rough him up, but that doesn't mean they _won't_. People are funny like that.

Fortunately, the goons just do as they're told: they pat him down, and pocket everything he has. Including his painkillers (fuck dammit). It's like a very polite mugging. Wei tells himself that he's binding his time and that when the moment is right, he's going to kill them all, because this makes him feel better.

The goons then usher him out of the listening station. Wei looks around. The area is now deserted. He can't even hear engines. When he peers in the direction of the area where the Khagan is docked, he thinks he might be able to see lights, but that's it.

One of the goons puts a hand on his shoulder, much to his chagrin, and steers him through a narrow path between the trees. Wei keeps looking around for the other Equalists but there's no sight of them. He strains his ears, yet there's just the sound of the wind in the trees. He wants to shiver. 

There's absolutely nothing to indicate what caused the _clank_ he heard a few minutes ago. He watches the goons to see if they're nervous, but their expressions are blank and their movements are slow and deliberate.

The trees thin out, and the loam underfoot is replaced by pebbles, and the goons take him to a scrubby, windblasted little beach where a pontoon has been set up. Moored at the pontoon is a speedboat. It's not one of the ones manufactured by Future Industries. Wei boards the boat without being told.

He pays close attention to the sound of the engine starting up. The engine is usually quiet; Wei wishes he could tell Sato about it. The cowling doesn't show anything to indicate who made the thing, and Wei sulks over this as he watches the island recede into the distance.

They travel across choppy grey water for an uncomfortably long time, until they reach a small fishing trawler that's idling out in the ass-end of nowhere. The goons haul Wei aboard.

Wei crams himself onto a small bench in the wheelhouse, and tries to stay awake.

\--

Wei opens his eyes when one of the goons pokes him in the arm. The trawler has stopped bouncing across the waves, and Wei is unspeakably glad about this, because he feels like his back is actively trying to murder him. It's like his spine has been replaced by hundreds of tiny mousetraps.

"Come on," the goon says. "This way."

The trawler has been moored... Uh, somewhere. Somewhere with a beach and lot of big trees covered with vines and moss. Wei squints at the daylight as he's led outside and off the boat. It looks like there's a forest that follows the coastline. He can't see any buildings other than the crude, scrubby little dock he's standing on. The air is warmer than it was in Republic City, though, so they must've travelled east or west rather than back up north.

There's a dirt road leading away from the beach, and there's a Satomobile idling nearby. The goon puts a hand on his shoulder again, and points him towards the vehicle. 

Wei labels the current goon Goon #1, though he's not sure if Goon #1 is the official lead dog or not. Goon #1 has a face like a slab of beef that's had human features punched into it. Goon #2 is already standing on the beach. Goon #2 is technically kind of attractive, though this is pretty much wasted on Wei right now. Goon #3 is inside the Satomobile. Goon #3 looks vaguely like a fence Wei used to sell stuff to. Wei wonders what happened to him. Goon #3 also looks extremely bored.

There's also a Goon #4, who was steering the trawler, but it doesn't look like Goon #4 will be accompanying them, so fuck Goon #4, Wei hopes his boat gets eaten by the Haetae Isles sea monster.

Wei is given the back passenger seat of the Satomobile. It must be one of the newer models, because it has safety belts, like an airplane. Wei fastens his belt purely for the hell of it, because it seems hilariously redundant given his general life expectancy. The Satomobile's suspension creaks in protest as the other goons climb inside. Goon #3 vacates the driver's seat so Goon #1 has the wheel.

Goon #1 starts the engine. Wei rubs his eyes and tries to focus. 

"You okay, buddy?" Goon #3 asks.

"Yeah," Wei says, "Fine."

"Well, so long as you don't pass out on us," Goon #3 says.

Wei is pretty tempted to drop dead or fall into a coma just to spite everybody.

The Satomobile trundles along for a while. The bumpy dirt road makes it even more uncomfortable than the boat ride. Wei tells himself that, if the Equalists had been victorious, the first thing they would've done was ensure that every road in Republic City was perfectly flat for the benefit of sad old assholes with back injuries.

He looks out the wind and watches the trees go by. He's vaguely aware that he should be plotting his escape, or coming up with some good bullshit to feed to the magnate, but the word 'should' just seems like a pretty novel concept at this point and he swears he can feel his brain slowly shutting down. And that's just not good enough, really, but he doesn't care enough to snap himself out of it.

He yawns. 

Out the corner of his eye, he spots a flash of light. Goon #1 is raising a lighter to the cigarette in his mouth. Wei immediately wakes up. 

That lighter looks very familiar.

And it looks familiar because it's Wei's. It's the lighter that Goon #1 took from him earlier. Which is funny, because Wei doesn't smoke... Well, not unless he's been set on fire, and getting set on fire is only one of the many horrible things that may befall a man who's foolish enough to use a lighter that was given to them by _Lan_.

Goon #1 spins the lighter's wheel.

Shit.

Wei can't actually remember what the lighter actually does, so he just screws his eyes shut and hopes for the best.

Nothing happens.

Wei opens his eyes find Goon #3 giving him an odd look, while Goon #1 has paused and is watching him in the rear view mirror, the unlit cigarette dangling from his bottom lip. Wei almost tells him to keep his eyes on the road.

"What the hell's your problem?" Goon #3 asks Wei.

"I thought I was gonna sneeze," Wei answers.

Goon #1 glances down at the lighter, then looks back at Wei in the rear view mirror again. After some thought, he winds down a window and flings the lighter out the window. Wei braces, but the lighter just lands silently somewhere in the undergrowth.

"Listen," Goon #1 says. "We just gotta take you someplace and then you'll be safe. This is meant to be a simple job. We _want_ it to be a simple job. Nobody has to get hurt. Nobody wants any complications. Do you follow?"

"Yeah," Wei says, "Sure."

Goon #1 keeps eyeballing him in the mirror.

Wei eyeballs him right back. "Okay, I'm not sure how stupid you think I am, but there's no way I'm going to try any funny business when I have no idea where I am and I'm stuck in a car with three guys who're bigger than me and I already feel like shit."

Goon #1 mulls over this, then nods. "What happened to you?"

"I got bounced off a wall."

"What, by the Avatar?"

"No."

"My second cousin said he saw her kick you in the face once," Goon #1 says.

Wei opens his mouth to say that never happened and _even if it did_ there's no way some asshole's second cousin would've seen it. But he changes his mind, and just resumes watching the trees.

"What's the tallest building you've ever fallen off?" Goon #1 asks.

Wei hesitates, then answers, "The Republic City Arena."

Goon #1 whistles. "How bad did it mess you up?"

Wei gives a very small shrug, on the defensive. "I was okay. I landed in the water."

Now Goon #3 snorts, and chimes in, "From that height? Landing in the water would still be like hitting the pavement."

"I was okay," Wei repeats, though for some reason, this nags at him.

"Either you're one lucky guy," Goon #3 says, "Or you're a liar."

"Hey," Goon #1 tells Goon #3. "Shut the fuck up, buddy."

Goon #3 gives a little grunt.

"Yeah, don't mind him," Goon #1 says. He takes out his own lighter and puts it to his cigarette. "I was just curious, I didn't want to start an argument about-"

Then all Wei hears is a bang like a Satomobile backfiring right by his head. He reflexively winces and shields his head with one arm, while his other hand grips the seat as the engine revs and the vehicle swerves and accelerates.

He has just enough time to think: _you know, my luck is either really good or really bad, I can never tell which-_

And then there's a crunch of metal and a jolt of pain - inertia shoves Wei against his seatbelt - then silence. Wei opens his eyes. The windscreen is full of tree trunk. He becomes aware that something is hissing. It's probably the radiator. Yeah, there's a plume of steam coming out the front of the vehicle, and-

Well, looks like they've hit a tree. 

Actually, they have definitely hit a tree. Hitting a tree is a thing they have done. 

Wei remembers something, Lan's voice: _the cigarette in the back, the one that's a different way around to all the others. That one explodes._

This would be why no one ever asks Lan for cigarettes.

Someone groans.

Wei does not turn to look at Goon #1, or what's left of Goon #1's head, and if there are blood spatters inside the car, he pointedly does not notice them.

By now, Wei has had a lot of practice at functioning when things go wrong, so he's able to carefully unbuckle his seatbelt. He then yanks the Satomobile's door open, and runs. His legs don't want to move, and he has to concentrate in order to avoid tripping over his own feet, but adrenaline eclipses the pain. He runs like he's twenty years younger and he's competing in a race where the grand prize is your own personal distillery and a lifetime's supply of good head.

He bolts into the forest and pushes through the undergrowth, covering his face with his arms to keep twigs and branches away from his eyes. It's only when breathing gets too difficult that he dares to look over his shoulder.

Then his right foot misses the ground, and he stumbles. 

Old habit keeps him from putting his hands out to break his fall. He braces himself for the impact. The world rushes past him, a blur of dirt and leaves.

The impact takes too long to come, and then there's just a _thud_ , and-

\--

Everything is quiet. Wei opens his eyes. The sky is visible through the gaps in the branches overhead, and there's distant birdsong. There's also something that looks like a small stone cliff just a few steps away from where Wei is lying. 

_Did I just fall down a ravine?_ Wei thinks.

His surroundings suggests that _yes, yes he did._

That's new, Wei thinks. Never fallen down a ravine before. Fortunately, it's not a very big ravine. The stone is grey and speckled with green moss. The pattern of it looks a little like words, words in a language that Wei doesn’t understand. He wants to believe that the words say something profound, and he could just figure them out if he concentrated hard enough.

Wei listens to the world. It's peaceful.

Hey, he then thinks. Maybe the fall fixed my back. Maybe it popped my slipped disc back into place. That'd be ironic.

Wei tries to get up, and almost screams.

No, apparently the fall did not fix his back.

Wei grits his teeth, rolls onto his side, and carefully pushes himself up. He can still stand.

He looks around for the goons, but there's still no sign of them. So, he allows himself a small smile that probably just makes him look completely demented, and then he trudges along the bottom of the ravine until it levels out. The forest isn't particularly dense, and the loamy ground is easy to walk on, so long as he minds the occasional tree root. 

It occurs to him that he'd better head back towards the coast. He tries to retrace his steps back to the dirt road.

Wei walks until time loses all meaning and the pain is so bad that he can almost hear it yelling at him. It's too cloudy to see the position of the sun, but his stomach tells him that it might be mid-day.

Eventually he comes to an old shrine by a small pool, and stops for a break. He still has no idea where he is. 

The shrine is just a stone table, surrounded a few crumbling pillars and some small animal statues that are too misshapen to be identified. It's impossible to tell who built the thing: there's nothing particularly Earthy or Fire Nation-y about its design, and the table itself is just a slab of rock balanced on four wobbly legs, held together by crumbling plaster. There isn't even a spirit tablet to say who the shrine belongs to. Wei only knows it's a shrine because, well... Why else would someone stick a stone table in the middle of nowhere?

Wei eyes the shrine speculatively, because he is out of ideas and he's fucking had it with everything.

It's a winter solstice soon, right? 

He digs in his pockets for an offering, but the goons did a pretty good job of looting him earlier. In the end, he settles on leaving his gloves on the shrine. They're good gloves.

Then he stands around and feels awkward.

He looks up at the trees.

He clears his throat.

"Look, uh," he says, to anyone who might be listening. "I'm not real good at this sort of thing, but I'd like a word with you. I could do with a little help right now." 

He then waits.

Nothing happens. 

He's not sure what he expected.

He feels like an idiot. 

He has enough sanity left to take his gloves back from the shrine. 

Wei begins walking again, and takes about eight steps before he notices that his right foot has fallen asleep.

He's been standing bolt upright for who knows how long. He's been moving around. There's absolutely no reason why his right foot should go numb. Unless... It has something to do with his back.

He freezes. Maybe he's been moving around too much. Maybe he should stay put and rest. But if he doesn't get out of this forest by himself, no one's going to rescue his sorry ass, and the goons are probably searching for him right now, and he has no idea what else might also be around.

He carefully lifts his right foot and puts it back down. It's fine. He can do this. He just needs, like, a walking stick or something. He's sure he saw some large branches by the shrine, so he slowly turns around and heads back.

Once he reaches the shrine again, he leans against it, steadying himself, and starts laughing.

He has no idea why he's laughing, because none of this is funny.

Then, before he can understand what he's doing, he's pushing against the shrine, hellbent on demolishing the thing. Apparently he still has just enough strength in him to be angry. The shrine's existence offends him. It's like a little monument to the sheer pointlessness of the universe, a punchline to a bad joke that's been made at his expense. The pain in his back now seems irrelevant. He just wants the shrine gone. He realizes that he's screaming obscenities at it. Good. Vandalizing a shrine while screaming is the most fun he's had in the past forty-eight hours.

The shrine topples into the pool of water.

Wei stands there and takes deep, wheezing breaths, as if he's been punched in the stomach. He staggers back, suddenly finding it hard to stand.

It's so quiet.

It takes Wei a moment to realize that the shrine fell into the pool without making a splash.

Wei spits on the ground, his mouth tasting of blood, and leans over to look into the pool.

The pool is black and mirror-still. Wei's reflection stares back, wide-eyed and grinning. 

Then the reflection is split apart by a woman's hand emerging from the inky darkness. 

The hand rises. And rises. And grabs Wei by the neck.

And it's not a woman's hand, because last Wei knew, women didn't have six-foot-long arms with seven elbows.

Wei is at a point in his life where he's not even remotely surprised by any of this.

The hand grips his throat, and yanks him into the water.

\--


	5. Winter, ASC 170

\--

Wei opens his eyes and finds himself lying by the side of the pool. He's not sure what just happened, but he quickly concludes that it was probably terrible. There's a part of him that hopes he just hallucinated the past two days because he's been dumb enough to drink too much of the wrong thing, even though he's at least forty-three years old and he's meant to know better.

His vision is still pretty dark around the edges. 

He gets onto his hands and knees, and drags himself over to the pool so he can splash some water on his face.

His perspective shifts, and when he reaches out towards the water, his fingers touch canvas.

The pool isn't real. It's a backdrop. Wei blinks to focus his eyes, glances over his shoulder, and finds himself looking down at a courtyard containing rows of chairs and tables.

He's sitting on floorboards, not dirt and loam. He's on a stage.

The sky is black, and there are no stars. Everything is illuminated by red lanterns. Their light seems to pulse slightly. 

Wei considers lying down and staying like that until things improve, but something catches his eye.

The chairs and tables are all vacant, all except for chair on the front row, which is occupied by a skinny little dog with grey fur and pointy ears. It looks like one of those dogs you see eating garbage on the side of the road.

The dog peers at Wei with beady blue eyes and thumps its tail against the seat.

Wei faces the dog properly, and sits down. He twiddles his thumbs. He wonders, not for the first time, if he's really dead.

Wei sucks his teeth for a moment. Then, as he's sure there's no one around to overhear him, he tells the dog, "You know, I'm not having a very good week."

The dog jumps off the seat, scrambles up onto the stage, and trots closer. It licks his hand.

Wei idly pats its head. It's a funny-looking dog, with a pointy face and a fluffy tail. Maybe its got some fox in its ancestry. Wei tries to recall what he's heard about foxes. All he knows is that they eat people's livers. He's reasonably sure that the dog-thing won't do that, though. If anyone ate Wei's liver, it'd probably choke them. 

Or do foxes eat hearts? Wei isn't sure.

The dog-thing nuzzles Wei's palm.

Wei gets an odd lump in his throat.

"Do you know where I am, girl?" he asks the dog-thing. He has no idea why he thinks it's a girl, but there you go.

The dog-thing sits down and scratches its right ear. "I know where everybody is," it says, without moving its mouth.

Right. A talking dog. That's fine. That's just fine. Things could be worse.

Wei runs through a mental checklist of every scenario that could result in him talking to a dog. "Are you a spirit?" he asks, because he wants to rule that out before moving on to the nastier questions like, 'What have I done to myself this time?', and 'Is this what people call a 'psychotic episode'?'.

He should probably be scared.

The dog-thing wags its tail again. "I am a spirit, yes."

"Or," Wei says, still unable to shake the feeling that the universe is laughing at him, "I'm just in the presence of a good ventriloquist."

"Actually, it's both," the dog-things says. "I'm an _amazing_ ventriloquist."

"That's... nice," Wei replies, then resumes twiddling his thumbs. He is having a conversation with a dog. "So you're a spirit."

"Yes."

Wei chooses to believe the creature, because all the other alternatives are too grim. He's never met a spirit before, but he'd like to think that they can't be as dangerous as people.

"Where am I?" he asks.

"In the spirit world."

Yes, that would figure. Where else would you talk to a spirit? In the spirit world. Ask a stupid question, Wei.

"So it's not like, uh, I _think_ I'm talking to you when I'm really just standing on the side of a road, ranting to myself, right?" Wei asks. He has a vivid mental image of himself yelling at people in the street while wielding a bottle.

"No," says the spirit. It's difficult to figure out its gender from its voice, but there's something about it that reminds Wei of a precocious teenager.

"How do I know you're telling the truth?" Wei says. "You could be part of my delusion."

The dog-thing lets out a little sigh. "The truth of anything is fundamentally unknowable."

"That's... Not the answer I wanted to hear, thanks."

"All you have in this world is what you think you know. And what you think you know is this: you are talking to a spirit, and the spirit is telling you that you're not delusional," the dog-thing says.

"Well, shit," Wei says.

The dog-thing prods his hand with its nose. It has a very warm nose, for a dog. "Do you want to go back to the physical world?"

"Yeah, I..." Wei begins, and thinks about it. There are so many thing he needs to do, and he'll never be strong enough, or smart enough, to see them through. "...I don't know. I'm tired."

"I know," the dog-thing says. "But you still want to find Amon, don't you?"

Wei looks over at the little creature. It watches him patiently, as if it wants him to throw a scrap of food.

Wei feels the hairs on the nape of his neck rise.

"What do you know about him?" Wei asks, very carefully.

"I know that he went around telling other humans that the spirits were on his side. Which was very rude." 

Wei says nothing. 

"To add insult to injury, if he HAD approached us and asked for assistance, some of us would have been happy to oblige," the dog-thing continues. "But... No. That would have required patience and respect on his part. He's a very silly man."

Wei looks out across the theater, taking in its opulence. The stage is painted a rich dark red - the paint is so shiny that it seems sticky and wet - and the pillars are carved with Fire Nation designs, florid and sinuous and... Actually, you know what, Wei decides that he'd better not look at the pillars, because the carvings are trembling slightly as if they're trying not to move, and Wei would like to pretend that he hasn't noticed this.

"Humans just don't seem to be scared of us any more," the dog-thing muses.

"Should I be scared of you?" Wei says, focusing all of his attention on the dog-thing now.

Its tail wags faster. "You? No. I like you."

"I, uh, destroyed a shrine," Wei feels compelled to admit, because if this things is going to eat his heart or his soul or whatever, then he'd like to get that over and done with.

"Yes, you were very angry," the dog-thing says. "But don't do that again, okay?"

"Uh. Okay."

"I know you're not a bad person, you just get _so mad_ sometimes," says the dog-thing. "You're human, after all."

"...Y-yeah," Wei says, then rubs at his temples. If he didn't have a headache to begin with, he'd definitely have one now. "Look, what do you want from me?"

The dog-thing swivels its ears back, and fidgets, submissive. "Well, I don't want your trust, for a start. I don't _expect_ your trust. I just want your help, if you're willing to give it."

"Really," says Wei.

"Really. I could use your help in finding Amon."

Ah. Yes. Everything comes down to Amon. "Why?" Wei asks. He's quickly starting to suspect that spirits are just as shitty as humans, in exactly the same ways.

"Because you have a human form, and I don't. I... can't just wander around the physical world by myself. It's dangerous," the dog-thing says. "In return, I could make you stronger. And I could tell you things."

Wei holds his hands up. "Wait. Why do you _want_ to find Amon?"

The dog-thing curls its upper lip slightly. "Are you ready for a bit of exposition?"

Wei just fixes the dog-thing with a hard stare.

"Very well, I'll try to keep it short and sweet," the dog-thing says. "It's like this: I may be small, but I have pride. And I don't think Amon should've been allowed to run around telling people that he represented us spirits when he _didn't_. That was.... That was really rude. Someone should have done something about that, and it worries me that he was just _allowed_ to do it, and no one challenged him. I mean, the Avatar didn't even talk to anyone about it, she didn't see it as an issue, though to be fair she's just a human girl and she's not without bias, and I-..." 

The dog-thing pauses. 

"...I'm dissatisfied with the way things are currently progressing," it says. "But it's not just that. I also want to find Amon for another reason. I want to find him because he knows stuff about meat."

Oh. Meat.

"Right," Wei says, "So you... Wait, what?"

"Meat!" the dog-thing says. "It's one of the things you humans are made of. And you just... You just _have it_. It grows around you. By itself! You don't have to consciously make it or put any effort into it or anything! And it stores energy so well! And it's _always, always changing!_ And... Uggh, you don't even appreciate it, but it's amazing. You know the spirit world? It doesn't have any meat. At all. Everything is just made of chi. Meat is why humans are quick and clever and spirits are slow and stupid."

Wei tries to think of a good reply to that, and just settles on, "Hm." He discreetly looks around the theater for an exit.

"Meat," Wei repeats.

The dog-thing nods. "He's a meatbender."

"That just sounds wrong," Wei tells it.

"Blood. Meat. Same thing," says the spirit.

For some reason, Wei's mind snags on the 'it stores energy so well' bit that the dog-thing just said. He thinks of batteries. He wonders if the dog-thing even knows what a battery is.

"So yes, if you help me find Amon, you can have revenge against him and I can eat his brain," says the dog-thing. "Win-win situation."

Yes, Wei has gone back to wondering what sort of horrible thing he drank in order to make this conversation possible. He expects spiders to start coming out of the walls any moment now.

"Can you repeat that last part, please?" Wei says.

"I said, it's a win-win situation."

"I meant the bit about brains."

"I said, I can eat his brain. In a manner of speaking."

"...Do you eat brains often?" Wei asks, because that seems like a good question to ask when one is discussing the eating of brains.

"No. Few of them contain anything of value."

Is that why the spirit hasn't eaten Wei's brain yet? "So..." Wei says, picking out each word carefully, "You. You want. You want to eat Amon's brain?" He has a mental image of the dog-thing adding the brain to some stir-fry. Delicious.

"Brain. Mind. Same thing."

Wei remembers the thing he heard about foxes eating hearts.

"This is all a bit too weird for me," Wei states.

The dog-thing actually shrugs. Dogs aren't really designed to shrug, but this one pulls it off pretty well.

"And if you _did_ eat the guy's mind, then what?" Wei asks.

"I'd have a better understanding of humans. Which might be a good thing to have, given the way the world is going."

"What do you mean?"

"Hmmm." The dog-thing screws its eyes shut in thought for a few seconds. "Humanity advances every day, while the spirit realm changes slowly, if at all. And humans are known for their aggression. They're invasive. They're voracious. How long before they start trying to exploit us for their own benefit?"

Wei concedes that it has a point. Humans have few qualms about exploiting other humans, never mind exploiting anything else.

Still, he wonders.

"Just so we're clear, if you're thinking of starting some humans-versus-spirits type fight, I'm not up for that," he says, levelling his index finger at the dog-thing.

The dog-thing's tail thumps against the floor. "After all you've been through, I think your loyalty to your own kind is admirable. But no, I don't want to instigate a war. Wars are expensive, as I'm sure you know. I'm just trying to be proactive so I'll be prepared for when... What's the saying? When the shit hits the fan."

There's clearly more to this than the spirit is letting on. "Do you reckon the shit's going to hit the fan soon, then?"

"The blades are getting precariously close to the manure, yes."

The spirit is raising more questions than its answering, and Wei doesn't need any more questions in his life. He's not even sure if he _wants_ to know what the spirit is talking about. He probably wouldn't give a shit if the whole world just randomly exploded tomorrow. In fact, he'd probably like it if the world just randomly exploded. That'd be a nice, straightforward end to things.

And, of course, he's still not sure that the spirit is telling the truth.

"Right. So why do you want my help for finding Amon, then?" Wei says. "What makes me so special?"

"Like I said, you have a human form, and I don't. If you let me hitch a ride with you, I can move around the physical world without being detected."

Wei takes a deep breath. The dog-thing holds up a paw. 

"And before you ask, I want to keep a low profile because the physical world is notoriously dangerous," the dog-thing adds. "There are _reasons_ why spirits only visit the physical world for short periods of time. Humans always want things from us. Or sometimes they want to harm us just to prove a point."

"So you want me to carry you around, so no one notices you?"

"That's correct."

Wei thinks. How does one carry a spirit, exactly?

"You're talking about possession, right?" he asks.

"'Possession' is a very loaded term," says the dog-thing. "I just want you to share your body with me. For a short while."

"That sounds..." Wei says, very slowly. "...Even worse."

The dog-thing gives him a blank look.

"So if I let you possess me, you're gonna be wandering around the physical world looking like _me_ , right? You'll be a spirit in a Lieutenant costume."

"You'll still be in control of yourself," the dog-thing says. "I'll just be offering assistance."

The little cogs in Wei's brain turn away, and he says, "Hmm. Sounds to me that you think I can give you some...whassit... Plausible deniability."

The dog-thing _flickers_ , as if it's a shadow puppet and the puppeteer has just lifted away from the screen for a split second. 

"You're only trying to bargain with me because you think I'm an easy mark," Wei states. "I know this dance." 

Wei stands up, carefully. His back doesn't hurt, and the absence of pain is pretty weird. He almost expects the pain to spring on him as soon as he drops his guard, as if it's just waiting for him to get complacent.

"Really, you find it so hard to believe that someone might want to _help_ you," the dog-thing murmurs, flattening its ears against its skull.

"Yep." Wei has no idea why he asked the spirits for help in the first place. He's not sure what he was expecting. And, great, he can sense a big old wave of despair rolling in like a thundercloud. As soon as he gets out of here, he's going to find a wine shop and have a long think about his options.

He looks at the courtyard. He has no idea how he's going to leave this place, but damned if he's not going to try.

"How do I get out of here?" Wei says, because it never hurts to ask.

"You really want to leave?" the dog-thing says - not angry, just surprised, and maybe even a little horrified. "Like... You're just going? Just like that?"

Wei walks past it, and hops down from the stage so he can search the courtyard for an exit.

"I mean, if you want to leave, then fine. I don't want to make an enemy of you, and I can't keep you here," says the dog-thing, "But... Lieutenant, you're hurt, and you don't have any friends back in your world. There are people who want to kill you."

Ha. Even a spirit calls him Lieutenant.

"I'll take my chances," Wei mutters. The spirit reminds him of the shipping magnate.

The spirit doesn't reply, but Wei can feel it watching him.

Wei walks past the chairs and tables to a door set in the courtyard wall. He wonders why he didn't notice the door earlier. The courtyard's walls are high and featureless - prison walls, Wei thinks, with a sick feeling - but then there's just this random door, painted Fire Nation red. There's nothing to indicate that it's bolted.

"Wait," the dog-thing says.

Wei pauses.

"If you're going back to the physical world, is there anywhere you want to go _to_? I could make that door open to almost anywhere you want," says the spirit.

Wei rests a hand on the door, not opening it just yet. "Anywhere?"

"Almost anywhere. Somewhere with a reflective surface. And somewhere you won't be seen."

This sounds far too good to be true. The dog-thing would need some serious mojo to pull off something like that.

"Why would you do me any favors?" Wei asks. He hates favors. People only offer favors when they intend to collect on them later.

The dog-thing looks up at the black sky, licks its nose, and emits a small cough. "You're pretty."

Wei turns around so he can stare at the spirit. He's unable to think of a reply beyond 'fuck off', and he doesn't even say that much.

"Please just pick somewhere," the dog-thing mutters.

Wei's just going to forget that the past minute actually happened.

"Gaipan," Wei says. Gaipan is far away from Republic City, and he heard someplace that the region produces good wine. Wei needs to find a wine shop very badly.

"Okay. Fine. You'll end up a few miles away from the city's north side. You should see some mountains in the distance - walk towards them until you reach a road, then follow the road south," the dog-thing says. "Word of warning, though: time works differently here, so you might return to the physical world and find that a few days have passed."

"Thanks for the heads-up," Wei mutters, and shoves the door open. He doesn't actually care what's on the other side. All he wants is to be away from this place, with its red stage and its high walls and its weird little dog bastard who apparently wants to get in his pants.

Just as the door opens, he gets a whiff of burning paper.

\--

Wei swallows a mouthful of water. He flounders, and finds himself trying to stay afloat in a lake. All it takes is a short, painful swim to the shore before he's back on dry land.

He knows he's in the physical world because everything feels real. Like pain. The pain definitely feels real. His spine still hates him, which is oddly reassuring.

Wei coughs up some more water, staggers to his feet, unpeels his moustache from his face, and looks around. Yeah, there are mountains in the distance. Wei starts trudging towards them. When he eventually reaches the road that the dog-thing mentioned, he's too tired to feel surprised.

He wonders if he made the right decision. 

He also wonders what the fuck grabbed him and pulled him into the pool earlier.

In retrospect, he should've asked about that.

Wei walks with his eyes closed, only opening them occasionally so he can check where he is.

\--

It's late evening when the outer wall of Gaipan comes into view. The spirit really wasn't lying.

Wei passes a few small huts and stalls, until he comes to an inn on the town's outskirts. The building is big and ugly, but a warm glow emanates from the windows, and Wei can just make out the murmur of people talking. There's also the faint smell of stew (which, unfortunately, isn't particularly different from the smell of armpits, yet still smells better than anything else Wei has eaten during the past few weeks).

Wei's stomach rumbles. He pats his pockets.

It's only then that he realizes he doesn't have any money, since the goons took all his stuff earlier.

He stands in the middle of the road, still damp with lake water, and reflects on his situation: he's tired, his back hurts, he needs to kill Amon, he doesn't know where any of the other Equalists are right now, he can't remember when he last ate, he can't remember what day it is, wanted by the United Forces, and he's out of painkillers.

And he can't even get drunk.

It's the last one which breaks him.

He turns, mechanically, and retraces his steps. Maybe he can find the lake he just came from.

\--

Wei eventually comes to a lake. He's not sure if it's the correct lake, but it's a lake, so fuck it, who cares? Not him. 

He walks into the water until it's up to his waist, and clenches his jaw to stop his teeth from chattering. He hadn't noticed how cold it was before.

"Hey," he says, quietly. "Fox spirit dog thing. I was wrong. You were onto a good idea. Sorry."

Then he waits, shivering. 

The temperature of the water becomes more tolerable, and the silence is only broken by distant birdsong. The breeze creates a few sluggish ripples, and the sky is so clear that Wei could probably pick out constellations, if he had any idea what the constellations looked like. The moonlight makes the world look like it's been drawn in charcoal. There are trees bowed around the lake's shores, branches dipped into the water as if in supplication.

Wei finds it difficult to stay awake. He's struggling to keep his eyes open when a small, grey head breaks through the lake's surface.

"It's okay," the spirit says, gently. "Really. Hold out your hand."

Wei holds out his right hand, palm downwards.

The spirit sinks its teeth into his fingers.

\--

 

"Wei," says a man's voice, close by. It sounds familiar. "You can wake up."

Wei opens his eyes. He's somewhere bright and airy, with pale green walls and a high ceiling. 

He's so comfortable.

This is the most comfortable he's ever been. It feels post-orgasmic. Things like pain and misery are alien concepts. There's no past, no future. There's just the present, which is warm and soft.

He shuts his eyes and tries to go back to sleep.

"Wei," the voice says, firmer now, "If you don't move soon, you'll get cramp in your right arm."

There's someone in the room with him. Wei tries to recall the past day or so. Does the voice belong to the guy who owns this room? Did Wei just get laid? Is that why he feels so content? Is the guy going to kick him out now? Is there any chance he can grab some breakfast before the guy's wife turns up? Isn't it strange that he's not hungover?

He really is getting cramp in his right arm.

Wei slowly sits up, and scratches his ribs. He looks around, and takes stock of the following: the sheets are silk, the bed is huge, and there's a disassembled radio set neatly laid out on the floor. He can't see the guy who spoke. 

Wei wonders where Amon is, then wants to slap himself.

He looks down at his chest. He's wearing a nightshirt that definitely isn't his, because he's the sort of dipshit who wastes money on buying nightshirts instead of sleeping in their regular clothes like a sensible person. There's some more stuff folded neatly on a chair next to his bed. They can't be his, because they look expensive.

The room has a large glass window at the end of it, and it shows rooftops beneath a grey winter sky. Despite the weather, the room is warm. Someone, somewhere, clearly has money.

There's a dressing table in a corner, so Wei slips out of bed and walks over to it. His mouth is dry, and he has that lovely 'I've just slammed my hand in a door'-feeling that he usually gets when worried.

Wei looks at himself in the mirror of the dressing table.

Some asshole has stolen his moustache. 

"What the fuck," he announces. 

"Yeah, sorry, the moustache had to go," he then says. "It made you too easy to identify." 

Wei stands there and stares.

Did he just refer to himself in second-person? And, more importantly, why did he just say that? Did that really happen?

He straightens up, crosses his arms, takes a few paces, then puts his hand over his mouth.

"It's okay," he says. "Relax."

Wei's incapable of relaxing. He suddenly finds it hard to breathe.

Gently, he says, "Oh dear. You remember our arrangement, right?"

Wei shakes his head. He doesn't know who he's talking to. "What arrangement?"

"I said I needed a human form. You agreed to this. Please, I don't want you to be upset about it..."

There's something crouched at the back of Wei's mind. Something that wasn't there before. He can just barely imagine it: something quick and silvery, and kind of warm, and not entirely unpleasant.

"Can you shut the fuck up, please?" Wei asks. "I need a moment."

He paces up and down the room, staring at the spotless floorboards. He remembers the spirit and all its sharp little teeth biting into his hand.

"You're in my head," Wei states, as a few things clunk into place. 

"Sort of," comes the reply. Wei hears his own voice speaking, but the inflection is different. And it sounds so calm, so patient. Even a little bit apologetic. "It's just a temporary arrangement, though. Once I'm done with Amon, I'll leave. I promise to behave myself in the meantime."

"What's your name?" Wei says. His own voice sounds hoarse.

"Jing. Sorry I didn't introduce myself before."

Wei shakes his head, and paces back over to the dressing table so he can brace himself against it. 

"I really am sorry about the moustache," Jing says (Wei definitely wants to think that Jing is the one talking right now, because things are easier that way), "So I hope you won't be upset about the haircut as well. I thought-"

Haircut?

Wei takes a proper look at his reflection.

The person who stares back is a middle-aged man with an angular, austere face and sharp blue eyes. If he smoothed his hair down, he'd pass as a high-ranking official, or a member of the military, or at least a very fancy clerk. Maybe a senior servant for a wealthy household, or the head waiter at a prohibitively expensive restaurant. In short, he looks like someone sensible.

Yes, he's definitely had a haircut.

"Well?" his reflection says, and looks a bit anxious. Mr. army general/magistrate/head waiter is now making puppy dog eyes at him.

"Stop talking," Wei snaps, and is relieved to see his own expression change to a scowl. 

Jing doesn't reply.

Wei grips the edge of he dressing table. He's fine. He can (mostly) recall what happened. This is all fine. Once he's composed himself, and he's reasonably confident that he's not about to start smashing furniture or screaming at the walls, he asks, "How long have I been unconscious?"

Wei's reflection now winces, as if it's about to say, 'sorry sir but I'm afraid you can't have a table without a reservation'. "You're not going to like this. A month." 

Wei's stomach lurches. "What?"

"You were injured. You needed to rest."

"No I didn't," Wei says, though this just makes him sound childish.

Jing shakes his head. Or rather, Jing shakes _their_ head. "You were in a pretty poor state. It hurt. I had to take you to a healer."

Wei lets that sink in for a moment.

"Wait," Wei says. "Don't tell I went... I mean, you made... You took me to a waterbender?"

Jing sighs and tilts his head back, so Wei finds himself staring at the ceiling. "I had to. Sorry. It was the fastest way to get you in back in fighting form. And if I'd let you stay injured, you would've just got worse.."

"You took me to a _waterbender_ ," Wei says.

"It was either that, or let you suffer permanent damage. I wouldn't have done if I thought I had any other choice. I suppose you could look at it this way: it was a waterbender who caused the damage, so perhaps it was fitting to have a waterbender fix it."

Wei slowly sits down on the floor, because he doesn't trust his legs to keep him standing.

"You could've asked me first," he says, in a very small voice.

"Yes, but you would've said no, and I need you to be functional."

"You had me out cold for a month," Wei says.

"Yes. And sincerely I hope I never have to do anything like that again. It was a chore."

"THAT WAS A MONTH OF MY LIFE, YOU-" Wei starts, then realizes that someone might overhear. People are going to think he's a nutjob. "...You just knocked me out cold for a month and walked around in my body and you're saying that this was a chore for you? I'm sorry, was it an _inconvenience_?"

Jing doesn't immediately reply to that. Wei gets the impression that the spirit is thinking. Eventually, Jing says, "Yes, I suppose this is pretty horrible from your perspective. I don't know what I can do to make it better. I'm so sorry." 

The damn thing actually manages to sound deeply apologetic.

Wei sits on the floor for a while, fuming, while the spirit sits in a corner of his brain and mopes.

When Wei is sure that he can speak again without screaming, he asks, "What the fuck did you do with me while I was unconscious?"

"Not a lot," Jing mutters. "Honestly, the most strenuous thing I did was eat six plates of deep fried tofu, which was... not an experience that I ever hope to repeat."

Wei stretches out his left leg so he can kick at a piece of the gutted radio set that's on the floor. "And what the fuck is this?"

"I was bored," the spirit squeaks. (Wei has never heard his own voice squeak before.)

Wei puts his head in his hands, and takes a few deep breaths. Then he picks up a valve and a piece of board from the radio. "...Did you try to put this back together?"

"Yes."

"Well, you didn't get very far with it," Wei says. 

"Um. Sorry."

Wei picks up a screwdriver - there's one lying close to hand - and starts trying to repair the radio, just to take his mind off everything. Maybe it'll keep him sane.

Jing falls silent. Wei gets the feeling that he's being watched.

"Where am I?" Wei asks, tiredly

"A town named Kosen," Jing replies, still very quiet. "There's a map on the dressing table. We're about ten miles from the coast. Is that okay?"

"How the hell did I get here?"

"By train."

Wei thinks about that for a moment. "Last I knew, I was broke. How did you pay for train tickets?"

Jing shrugs Wei's shoulders. "I made some rocks look like money."

"No, seriously," Wei growls, "how did you pay for the train tickets?"

"I made some rocks look like money," the spirit repeats, now sounding a little petulant. "You didn't have any coins with you! How else would've I paid?"

"How the fuck does that even work?" Wei asks. If he could slap this spirit, then he would.

"I can make things look like other things!"

"How?!"

"I don't know, I thought everyone could do that!" the spirit laments. "I mean all things are all the same anyway, really, they just look different to different people, so why is this a big deal?"

Wei has no idea what the spirit is talking about. "You can make rocks look like money," he says, flatly.

"Yes!"

Wei wants to bang his head against a wall. "You do know that money is the most important thing in human civilization, right?"

"Yes," the spirit says, "Of course I know that." It speaks with the bravado of a teenage boy who's trying to convince everyone that yeah, he has totally scored with hundreds of chicks, and he definitely has a super hot girlfriend who lives in Ba Sing Se.

"We regularly kill each other over money," Wei adds. "Money determines whether people live or die. And you can just... trick people into thinking you have money when you don't."

"Ye-es," the spirit mutters, "I know."

Okay, Wei thinks, and takes a deep breath. He's not quite sure what kind of power he's got his hands on. If the spirit is telling the truth about its abilities, then that makes it akin to a portable counterfeiting operation. They'd better hope that the triads never get wind of this.

"Don't give people fake money ever again," Wei says. "It'll make us really easy to track."

"I didn't use fake money all the time. I stole a guy's wallet while he was sleeping on the train."

Wei opens his mouth to say you mean you stole stuff while pretending to be me?, and then he remembers that he's wanted for 'terrorism'. Theft is the least of his concerns. "Oh. Great. You're a regular career criminal. Did you do any other illegal stuff I need to know about?" 

"No! Honest. I only stole one wallet. Apart from that, I was very boring. I was polite to everyone I met. I didn't drink alcohol, or eat too much street food, or smoke. I didn't even masturbate. Except once. By accident. Which was probably good for you, so-"

Wei throws his screwdriver at the wall, and puts his head in his hands again. For just a split second, he's dangerously close to throwing up.

"You know, maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that last part," Jing mumbles. "Sorry."

Wei doesn't reply. He's too busy trying to not think about certain things.

"I, uh, got you some spectacles," Jing offers, like this is some sort of consolation prize for Wei's horrifying lack of bodily autonomy. "They're on the dressing table as well..."

Wei remains on the floor for a little while longer. Eventually, he manages to compose himself and stand up. He goes to get the map. Just as promised, there's a pair of glasses sitting next to the map on the dressing table. 

Wei's hand hovers over the map for a moment, but he picks up the glasses instead, out of curiosity. Jing stays silent. 

Wei puts the glasses on. He recoils. The world suddenly looks a lot more protuberant than it was before, and there's a lot of... stuff. Too much stuff. 

It's actually nauseating, so he takes the glasses off again.

"If you wear them for a while and get used to them, you should stop getting headaches," Jing says, in the peppy little voice of someone who thinks they're being helpful.

Wei ignores the spirit, and opens up the map. One side shows the town, while the other side shows a chunk of what's presumably the Earth Kingdom. It doesn't tell him much.

"Amon - I mean, Noatak - is in a town on the Ruyi Peninsula, which is about an hour away from here by train," says Jing.

Wei grunts. "How do you know?"

"I used to have a job that involved finding things. So I'm good at sniffing people out," Jing says. "...And he's not difficult to sniff out, if you don't mind my saying so. I think he might be festering a little."

Wei remains suspicious, but he just shrugs, and wanders over to the pile of clothes on the chair so he can get dressed. The clothes look brand new, and the fabric is starchy and rough against his skin. It's almost like he's putting on a costume, and he keeps stealing glances at the mirror, uneasy about the stranger who stares back. 

He really does look like a clerk, albeit a very well-paid clerk. The clothes suggest knowledge and wealth. Borrowed power.

"So, about this brain-eating thing," Wei mutters as he buttons his shirt.

Jing doesn't say anything, but Wei gets the sense that the spirit has just pricked its ears up.

"What's... What's that gonna involve?" Wei says. He really should've asked about this earlier. If it involves cracking Amon's head open like an egg and scooping out the contents, then... He'll be unenthused, but not unwilling. Some people deserve what they get.

"Good question," Jing says. "Well, you know how humans have both a physical body and a spirit body? It's just his spirit I'm after. I want to drag it back to my den so I can eat it in peace."

Right, maybe it's not literal brain-eating. Wei isn't sure if he's disappointed or relieved. "And that means what?" he asks.

Wei's shoulders shrug by themselves again. (And Wei should be worried by how natural this feels, how quickly he's adjusting to being controlled.) "I'll open a temporary portal between the two worlds. It's not difficult, so long as there's a reflective surface nearby. I'll walk you through it. You just need to take me to him."

"If it's easy to open a door between worlds," Wei says, "why don't you just open a door right next to him, then grab the guy's spirit and skedaddle? Why drag me into it?"

"I _could_ do that, but your help is going to make it easier. The veil between worlds is, um... Well, it's like skin. It's stretchy, and if you tear through it, it heals very quickly. If I went around opening doors willy-nilly, I'd just wear myself out. It requires a lot of energy to just go around ripping holes in things. Also, there are, um, right ways and wrong ways to open doors, and if you do it wrong, it's very dangerous. I need an accomplice."

Wei thinks about this. He wonders if he's doing the right thing. Then he decides that he doesn't give a shit.

"Wei?" Jing says, quietly. "I promise it'll be like I said: once I get what I want, I'll go away and leave you in peace."

Wei just frowns as he straightens his cuffs.

"You're wondering what the catch is, right?" Jing asks.

"Huh. You can read me pretty easily," Wei murmurs.

"Well, yes, but, listen, if everything goes as planned, there shouldn't be any catches. This should be a mutually beneficial arrangement. I'm a reasonable person, Wei, and we have more to gain by co-operation."

Yeah, sure, the spirit _would_ say that.

"How many brains have you eaten before?" Wei asks.

Jing takes draws a slow breath. "To be honest... Just one."

There has to be a story there. "Did you have an accomplice then?"

"No, and uh..." Jing hesitates for a moment, and Wei feels a roll of nausea in his gut. "Things were different."

Wei side-eyes his reflection in the dressing table mirror. His reflection gives him an abject look. 

"Alright," Jing confesses, "He was a Fire Nation soldier in the engineering corps. It was during the Great War. The Fire Nation did some particularly transgressive things during that time. I certainly wasn't the only spirit to attack their soldiers. There are so many people who still haven't recovered from what the Fire Nation did. Does this bother you, that I'm capable of hurting humans?"

Wei takes a moment to put on some pants and mull over things. "Not really," he says. "So what do you get, exactly, out of eating people's... brains, minds, whatever?"

"Their knowledge. Their memories."

"So you can't get, like, uh..." Wei looks up at the ceiling as he chooses his words. "...Their intelligence? Or any other inherent traits? Like, their bending?"

Jing scratches his - Wei's - chin in thought. "Why would I want things like that?"

"You don't think shit like that is important?"

"Important to humans, maybe."

Wei nods absently. "Well, just checking. I don't want you picking up Amon's bloodbending somehow. The world doesn't need another bloodbender running around."

"Hm," says Jing, and Wei senses skepticism.

Wei changes the subject. "So how're you gonna nab this guy? Because it's not like I can fight him one-on-one."

"Look under the bed," Jing says.

Wei crouches - and damn it's so good that he can move without pain - and sticks his hand under the bed, groping around until his fingers find some sort of handle. There's a suitcase. One of the big, solid, shiny ones that cost too much money. (How much cash was in that wallet Jing stole, anyway?) Wei pulls the suitcase out and opens it up. The interior is padded, and it contains a few doodads that look like pulleys, and some skinny baton-y things.

He takes a moment to mentally put all the doodads together, assembling them in his mind until he figures out what he's looking at. It's a compound bow. Gansukh has one like it, come to think of it. Though hers is a lot nicer. This one looks like the ugliest kind of prototype. Some of the parts might be Satocycle sprockets.

"Where did you get this?" Wei asks. 

"Oh, you know, it's not a big deal, I just got an ordinary bow and customized it a bit," Jing says, and buffs his fingernails against his shirt. 

Great. Is this thing even usable? "You can't put a radio back together, but you can customize a bow?" Wei mutters.

"Look, I know how a bow _works_ , but the radio is full of wire and fiddly little silvery bits." Jing now sounds indignant. "It's not my fault you humans are really weird. One day you're using ballistas and blasting jelly, the next... You're making little maps out of tiny pieces of metal and putting them in boxes that do things."

Wei picks up a chunk of the bow. "I'm not sure I want to use this contraption. How do I know it won't snap in half and hit me in the face if I try to draw it?"

Jing hmphs. "I have the memories of a Fire Nation engineer, I'll have you know."

"Was he a good engineer?" Wei asks.

"His commanding officer thought so! He was very clever! He was clever enough to, uh..." Jing trails off. "...He was clever."

Wei turns the bow over in his hands. "How clever could the guy've been if he got his brain eaten by a spirit?"

Jing opens his mouth, takes a deep breath, then says, "...Well, _I_ think it's a good bow."

"I don't even know how to use a normal bow," Wei grumbles.

"I do. You just point it, I'll aim it. Teamwork."

Wei digs through the suitcase. It also contains a bundle of arrows, some of which have odd little metal tubes crudely attached to them. Further digging uncovers a few hypodermic syringes. Tranq darts.

Something about this strikes Wei as being very ass-backwards.

"You're a spirit," he says. "You can make rocks look like money. You can make doorways open all over the place. Why do we even need a bow? Can't you just throw spirit magic at people or whatever? And..." He remembers something. "How come you had to get to this town _by train_? Why couldn't you just open a door in the spirit world that'd take you straight to your destination?"

Jing takes a deep breath. "It's relatively easy to open doors to the physical world from inside the spirit world but it's much harder to open doors to the spirit world from the physical world because the rules are different, and I'm more familiar with the spirit world anyway, which is why I need your help catching Noatak _like I said_ and also there's a limit to how many doors I can open without drawing attention and also when you're in the physical world it's easier to follow physical rules just like how it's easier to follow spirit rules when you're in the spirit world and-"

Wei's stomach lurches. 

"Okay. Shut up," Wei says, holding up a hand. "I want you to explain all this crap to me after I've had some breakfast."

Jing mutters, "I know what I'm doing."

"Right." Wei pats down his sleeves and pockets to see what's in them. His pockets just contain the room keys, enough money to buy food for a week, and a few small pebbles. "Of all the stupid assholes on this planet you could've possessed, you chose to possess me. But you say you know what you're doing."

Jing is silent for a moment, almost sheepish, and then he says (and Wei doesn't know why, but he's definitely thinking of the spirit as a 'he' now), "Can I make a request?"

"If it's not too nasty or dumb, yeah."

"Can we have dou fu nao?"

Wei sighs, runs his hands through his hair, and looks at the grey winter sky through the window. "Alright, kid. Sure."

\--

It's only when they leave the room that Wei realizes the size and lavishness of the hotel. He pads silently down long hallways until he reaches the stairs to the ground floor, and he avoids looking at the other guests. Jing stays quiet, which gives Wei just enough time to resume wondering if Jing actually exists, or if he's just a very elaborate symptom of a nervous breakdown.

Wei crosses a cool green lobby and steps out into the street. 

The town's buildings are small and old-fashioned compared to the ones in Republic City. Everything looks so quaint that it doesn't seem quite real, and Wei considers returning to his hotel room and staying there until the cops arrive and lock him up somewhere safe. He feels like he's a fake person in a fake town, a figment of someone's imagination, and he recalls the old story about the man who dreamed he was a butterfly. Wei briefly entertains the thought that he's an aspect of Jing's delusions, not visa-versa, and then he dismisses the idea as a load of pretentious crap.

He worries that he looks strange to people. He wonders if they can tell there's something wrong with him.

The first thing he does is nip into a shop and buy a newspaper, because newspapers provide a quick and dirty connection to reality and the wider world. Then he locates a food stall with dou hua on the menu, and takes a seat. 

The woman behind the counter actually smiles at him and pats her hair when he looks her way. Wei finds it unusually easy to smile back. He's given a steaming full bowl of tofu and scallions.

The food is okay, he guesses, though he's used to eating bean curds with sugar, and this stuff tastes strongly of soy sauce. He pushes the chunks around with his spoon. He's not hungry. Jing's the one who ends up shovelling it into his mouth. 

Wei just sits there and feels vaguely itchy. The prospect of killing Amon doesn't give him much joy. It's just a thing that he needs to get done. A chore.

While Jing deals with eating for them both, Wei reads the newspaper. Apparently, being possessed does wonders for your ability to multi-task.

He flicks through the pages. The smell of ink and paper is comforting.

There are 'before' and 'after' photos of the clean up in Republic City. There's a lengthy article on the trial of Hiroshi Sato, which Wei should probably read eventually, but not right now, because it's too miserable and he's too sober for it. There's a smaller article on Sato's daughter, along with a picture of her that was presumably taken a long time ago, as she looks wide-eyed and genuinely cheerful. There's an article on how the Central Earth Kingdom is having problems with bandits; apparently there was a pretty violent train robbery just last week. There's an article on the high taxes in Ba Sing Se. There's an article on a shipping vessel that's gone missing in Southern waters, presumably due to piracy. There's an article on political tensions between the North and Southern territories.

Wei hunts through the paper, searching for news about anyone he knows. He wants to know if further arrests have been made, but there's nothing. He hopes that the chi blockers are alright, then tells himself to avoid dwelling on them.

There is only a small article on the continued efforts to find Amon. The details are vague.

The article includes a picture of an Equalist poster, depicting Amon in profile against a red and white sunrise.

Wei stares thoughtfully at the mask.

Wei decides that he should find some wood. He's always been good at carving.

At the back of his mind, something small and hungry lifts is head as if scenting the air.


	6. Summer, ASC 171

_Summer, ASC 171_

 

Tarrlok opens his eyes and discovers a large wet nose right in front of his face. He recoils from it.

The nose belongs to a polar bear dog, though the animal just gives him a dismissive look before wandering away.

Tarrlok sits upright, unsure whether he should remain perfectly still or start running. All he can hear is birdsong. The air is cold, and smells of damp earth. He's in... well, some kind of wood with sparse, twiggy trees. The quality of the light suggests that it's some time after dawn. 

Last he knew, he was in a White Lotus compound, and it was raining, and the food was bad, and he'd just woke up when Korra...

_Korra._

Korra is sitting under a tree, drinking from a water skin. The polar bear dog ambles over to her, pokes her with its nose, then sits down by her side and curls up, looking like a snowdrift. 

When Korra realizes that Tarrlok is awake, she has the decency to look worried.

Tarrlok finds the will to speak.

"YOU ACTUALLY KIDNAPPED ME," he yells at Korra.

Korra obviously takes a moment to muster some false bravado, and shrugs. "Yeah. Now we're even."

Tarrlok gets to his feet, staggers a bit, finds his balance, and tries to look imposing while wearing a nightshirt and a pair of pants that are too short in the leg. "You! You're in so much trouble, you... horrible little shrew."

"Hey, calm down," Korra says, although she's got to realize how unreasonable this sounds. What the hell is she thinking? And did she actually carry him away from the White Lotus compound? By herself? Tarrlok weighs more than she does. The girl is a monster. Just what have the White Lotus been feeding her?

(Tarrlok is getting tired of being knocked out and carried places. It makes him feel like he's a hapless damsel in a badly-written serial.)

"I'm the Avatar," Korra adds, "I've got to do what I think is best for the greater good. Anyway, if I'd left you with the White Lotus, they would've just sent you to court and thrown you in jail for twenty years or whatever."

"Exactly! And I was fine with that!" Tarrlok says. He has a headache, but he's not about to let that hold him back from throwing a good shitfit. "I was hoping that if I kept my nose clean and played my cards right, they'd put me in a low security prison and I could spend my time reading books and helping with the communal garden, but now they'll probably just put me into some secret White Lotus hell-hole that's full of dangerous criminals and doesn't have any toilet paper!"

Korra frantically gestures for him to lower his voice. "That won't happen, okay?"

"How do you know that?!"

"I'll explain stuff to people. After everything's settled down." 

"Oh really. I'm sure that'll work out excellently," Tarrlok says. Then he wants to wince because he sounds ridiculous, which just makes him angrier. Maybe he can blame his temperament on the fact that that he has a mild concussion. His right eye socket feels tender, but not too swollen. Did she give him a black eye, then heal it while he was unconscious? What a little shit.

Korra scowls and gets to her feet. "Look, I know what I'm doing, alright?"

Tarrlok has to stop himself from kicking her. Or attempting to kick her, at least. "No. You have absolutely no idea what you're doing, you stupid girl. And I'm leaving. Good day." 

"You're not wearing any shoes," Korra points out.

"I DON'T CARE," Tarrlok replies, and turns to walk off. 

He takes two steps, and then he's unable to lift his right foot off the floor. There's a block of ice around his ankle, pinning him to the ground. 

He tries to melt the ice, then remembers that he can't.

He's going to kill her. 

"LET ME GO," he shouts, looking back at the girl.

Korra looks at him like he has rabies. "Not until you calm down."

And then Tarrlok's brain does that terrible thing where he's fully aware of how he's behaving, but he still can't stop himself. "I WILL NOT CALM DOWN. ARE YOU MENTALLY DEFICIENT? DO YOU THINK YOU CAN INTIMIDATE ME INTO DOING WHAT YOU WANT? HOW DARE YOU. YOU'RE GOING TO TAKE ME BACK TO THE WHITE LOTUS RIGHT NOW OR I'M GOING TO..." What? Cry? "MAKE SURE THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES. YOU ARE THE WORST AVATAR IN THE HISTORY OF HUMANITY."

Korra just stands there, wide-eyed. (Her polar bear dog only lifts its head for a moment, gives Tarrlok a cursory glance, then closes its eyes again.)

"LET ME GO," Tarrlok repeats.

"Uh," Korra says, "No."

Tarrlok suddenly feels very tired, so he sits back down on the ground, a little clumsy because of his frozen foot. Then he rubs at his temples, and quietly tells Korra, "You're an asshole."

Korra blinks at him like she can't believe he just said 'asshole'.

"Are you done?" she asks.

Tarrlok shrugs.

Korra unfreezes his foot, then watches to see what he'll do next.

Tarrlok just sits there. He listens to the mindless chirping of the birds in the trees. 

"So, um..." Korra says, utterly out of her depth. She pauses, probably trying to think of an appropriate response to this whole... situation. "You okay?"

"No."

"Is there anything I can do?"

"Can I go back to the White Lotus now?" Tarrlok asks, simply. "I think I'd like to go back to sleep."

"You're sure you want to go back?"

"What, isn't that obvious enough yet?" Tarrlok actually looks around for something to throw at her, but there's nothing in reach. 

"I just thought..." Korra looks at her feet. "Look, I thought that if you helped me find Noatak, maybe people would go easier on you. I thought I was giving you a chance."

"You thought you were doing me a favor?"

"I, uh. Yeah."

"You punched me in the face."

"Yeah, but only 'cause I, uh... Kind of panicked."

"Yes, panic seems to be an occupational hazard when kidnapping people," Tarrlok says. He pauses so he can concentrate on his breathing. He's heard that concentrating on your breathing is meant to be helpful. Then he says, "Why would you want to do me any favors?"

"I don't know," Korra sighs, and takes a few careful steps closer to him. "I'm meant to fix things. And maybe I wanted you to prove that you're not a total shithead, because if you were a total shithead, that'd just be.... depressing."

Shithead? "Do you swear at Tenzin like this?" Tarrlok asks.

Korra frowns and purses her lips. She inches a little closer to him. "No. Tenzin's the sort of guy who tells you off if you just say the word 'fart'."

"I'm going to take a wild guess and assume that you picked up your vocabulary from that firebender of yours," Tarrlok mutters, without looking up at her.

Korra sticks out her chin. "Nope. Mako never swears. What's your problem with firebenders?"

"I don't have a problem with firebenders."

"You just called Mako 'that firebender'."

"Well, he is a firebender, isn't he?"

"It's your tone of voice, bub."

Tarrlok almost says, 'I don't have a problem with firebenders, I've worked with firebenders my entire life', then wonders how they ended up down this tangent. He now fixes her with a stare that's meant to be authoritative. "Does Mako know you're here right now? Does he know that you intend to go after Noatak alone, with just a known bloodbender for company?"

Korra doesn't answer that question fast enough.

"Did you actually run off without telling anyone where you were going?" Tarrlok asks. "Because, if so, that's incredibly selfish."

"I'll send Mako and the others a letter. We can meet up later."

"Right, and how quickly will your people send out a search party after you?"

"I'm pretty good at avoiding search parties. Had my entire life to practice at it."

"And if you manage to find Noatak, do you think everyone's going to say, 'congratulations, Korra! We'll completely overlook all the idiotic things you've done! Going after a scared, desperate criminal by yourself - while dragging along the man who once kidnapped you, no less - wasn't a terrible idea at all!'?"

Korra glowers. "Look, I just... need to find Amon myself, alright?"

"THAT'S-" Tarrlok takes a moment to adjust his voice so he's not screaming at her, "...That's just stupid." Then an idea occurs to him. "...Wait. Please tell me that you didn't just decide to break me out and go after Noatak on a whim just because there was a storm last night, and you were hoping that the rain would cover your tracks, so you saw an opportunity and went for it?"

"...N-no," Korra says.

Tarrlok needs to find a wall so he can bang his head against it.

"Did Katara actually forbid you from pursuing Noatak?" he asks, slowly. "Is that why you were so grumpy yesterday? Because she wouldn't let you join her little Noatak-hunting trip?"

Korra's expression suggests that she's very close to punching him. He should probably brace for impact, but he swears that if she gets close enough to hit him, he's going to bite her arm. "I'm the Avatar. Amon picked a fight with _me_ ," Korra says. "Bringing him to justice is my responsibility."

"YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE DOING," Tarrlok replies, then lets out a deep sigh. Here he is. Sitting in a forest in his night clothes. Screaming at a teenage girl. He wants some alcohol. He wants a bath. He wants a bath full of alcohol. "...You know what, fine. I give in. I won't try to talk you out of anything, because you're beyond hope. If you insist on going after Noatak, I'll go with you, because you're clearly a menace to yourself."

"You're a menace to yourself," Korra grumbles. 

Tarrlok opens his mouth to reply, then pauses. "...Yes, true. I doubt we'll make it as far as the border without trying to kill each other again. So, you said you intended to follow Katara; do you even know where she is?"

Korra inches closer to him again, until she's two paces away. She's still scowling, though she speaks in the quiet, measured tone of someone who's making an effort to be patient after being insulted. "She's heading to a town called Shunjing in the Southern Earth Kingdom. I know how to get there."

Tarrlok makes an educated guess: "Shunjing is in the Fei Cui Province, isn't it?" Tarrlok lets out a deep breath. "Please don't tell me you intend to travel by polar bear dog the entire way."

"What, you expect me to walk?"

"At least walking would be less conspicuous."

"Naga took me from the South Pole to Republic City without any trouble."

"Yes, but then no one had any idea who you were."

"We can avoid people. Naga can go over rivers and mountains, and she can out-run just about anything."

The bear dog, hearing its name mentioned, now raises its head.

"Yeah, Naga's pretty fast. She's better than a Satocycle," Korra adds, and wanders over to the animal so she can pat it on the shoulder.

Tarrlok stares at Korra. Then he stares at Naga. Naga stares back. Naga yawns, displaying canines the size of a man's index finger.

"Seriously?" Tarrlok says. "No."

\--

Travelling by polar bear dog is somehow worse than Tarrlok expected.

The creature only stops briefly to drink from a stream, sniff the ground, or urinate on things. It's constantly moving. Riding it is like sitting on a couch that has cushions filled with skunkweasels. Tarrlok is always a second away from falling off. He grips the saddle with his good hand, and tries to ignore the fact that he has a very healthy, robust girl jostling in front of him. (It's probably a good thing that he lost his libido around the same time as when he lost his career, his bending, his self-respect, and... Well, a lot of things. He suspects that he's lost just about everything except for his capacity for self-pity.)

Then there's the polar bear dog's hair, and the smell. Tarrlok tells himself that he'll get used it eventually, but every so often, he gets a whiff of the molted fur on his hands and it's akin to being hit in the face by an old carpet that's had fish guts spilled on it.

The polar bear dog takes them through more woodland, although Tarrlok doesn't pay much attention to the scenery. Instead, he contemplates questions such as: why does Korra even have a polar bear dog? What is wrong with her parents? What sort of people let their daughter ride around on an animal that has a reputation for eating people? Has it ever tried to eat her? Has it ever tried to eat anyone else? How was she allowed to bring the thing into Republic City? If she wasn't the Avatar, no one would tolerate such nonsense. If she wasn't the Avatar, no one would've given her the time of day. The girl really doesn't do much to dispel the idea that Southerners are a bunch of inbred hicks. Tarrlok wouldn't be surprised if the White Lotus embassy in the South Pole was just a longhouse with a few sled dogs on guard. No wonder Korra managed to escape. Maybe the White Lotus actually let her leave, just so they didn't have to deal with the polar bear dog smell.

To add injury to insult, it isn't long before he starts to ache. Riding a polar bear dog isn't like riding a Satocycle. Riding a polar bear dog actually requires effort.

Maybe Korra eventually notices his discomfort, because there comes a point where she tells Naga to slow down, then says, "I think we're a safe distance away from the White Lotus by now. Do you want a break?"

Tarrlok fights his natural inclination to tell her that he's fine, and replies, "That might be a good idea."

The bear dog stops without being ordered, and Korra dismounts. Tarrlok swings one leg over the creature's saddle, then just sort of slides off.

Korra offers, "If you're feeling kind of sore, it gets easier. You just have to push yourself up in the saddle whenever her paws hit the ground..."

"I thought that's what I was doing," Tarrlok mutters. Though it's a little difficult to push yourself up in the saddle when you don't have stirrups. Perhaps he should mention that to the smarmy little shit.

"Like I say, it gets easier. It takes practice." Korra goes over to one of the panniers on the saddle and digs through it. She takes out a pair of shoes that look like Tarrlok's. Because they are Tarrlok's shoes. She had the good sense to grab his shoes when abducting him. Tarrlok is slightly impressed.

Korra hands the shoes over. Tarrlok takes them, moves away from the polar bear dog until he feels like he's at a safe distance, then sits on the grass so he can put his shoes on.

"Huh. You have really long toes," Korra comments.

Tarrlok chooses to ignore that. "Do you have any socks?"

Korra takes some socks out of the pannier and throws them over. "You want anything else? I've got you another change of clothes."

Tarrlok unthinkingly catches the socks with his bad hand, almost dropping them. Then he considers what Korra has just said. "...Why do you have clothes for me? You don't even know my sizing."

"You're about the same build as Tenzin." Korra looks him up and down. "Though, actually, I think Tenzin's more, uh..."

"What?" Tarrlok lets the implications sink in. "...What? You stole Tenzin's clothing?"

"Just some spare stuff I found at Katara's house. The family takes holidays there sometimes." Korra holds up her hands. "Don't worry, the clothes aren't saffron-colored. And I bet Tenzin won't miss them. They look kind of old. But they're clean."

"I am not wearing Tenzin's old clothes."

"You can't wear the same shirt and pants forever."

" _I am not wearing Tenzin's old clothes._ "

"Why?"

Tarrlok tries to think of an intelligent, mature answer to that.

"You can walk around naked for all I care, but if you're going to wear that shirt and those pants every day then I'm going to throw some water at you every so often," Korra says. 

Tarrlok stares at her, then clears his throat. "Well, I'm going to smell like a polar bear dog no matter what I wear, but fine. Thank you for giving me a spare change of clothes."

"Naga doesn't smell," Korra says, though Naga has wandered off to eat some grass and is apparently oblivious to them both.

"Of course she smells. All dogs smell. As do bears, I imagine. And Naga smells worse than a bear and a dog put together."

"Yeah, well, look who's talking," Korra replies. "Tenzin used to say that the smell of your aftershave would turn up at council meetings five minutes before you did. He said it was like a warning for everyone to leave the room."

"Yes, but-" Tarrlok begins, before pausing. "Wait. Tenzin said that?"

"Yep!"

Tarrlok is outraged for a second, and then he says, "Hm. I never knew that Tenzin actually had a personality."

"What's Tenzin ever done to you?" Korra asks, hands on hips.

"Apart from make insulting comments about my aftershave? Well, he-" Tarrlok, quickly compiles a mental list of offenses, but the truth is just that he's never liked Tenzin. "He's a self-important contrarian and it's a travesty that he managed to get a seat on the council when he represents a nation which consists entirely of close relatives, most of whom are under the age of twelve. He's had everything handed to him on a plate for his entire life, and he's still ended up being a useless fartbag who's good for nothing except making more airbenders."

Korra fixes Tarrlok with a stare that's downright unsettling - if Tarrlok wanted to be dramatic, he'd say that it's a stare that has the weight of 10,000 years behind it - and says, "You're envious of him."

Oh great did Tarrlok really just make it that obvious. 

"Also, wow, you actually called Tenzin a fartbag," Korra adds.

"Whatever my personal feelings may be, they don't invalidate the fact that he never should've been on the council," Tarrlok replies. He lets out a little huff, and goes about putting his socks on. "Can we please change the subject?"

Korra gives him another one of those speculative looks that he's quickly learning to hate. "What do you want to talk about instead?"

"I don't know. You could tell me why you couldn't go with Katara to find Noatak."

Korra makes an 'ugghhhhhh' noise at that. "So what, so you can tell me that I'm stupid for trying to find Noatak on my own?"

"No. If I question your decisions, you'll just get defensive," Tarrlok replies. He remains sitting on the ground, and crosses his legs in order to get more comfortable. "I'll try to withhold judgment."

"You can do that?" Korra grumbles.

Tarrlok almost grimaces. "Like I said, I'll try."

Korra puffs out her cheeks and looks up at the sky, frowning. She crosses her arms. "Katara doesn't think I'm able to handle a bloodbender."

"Why not?"

"She's just..." Korra mutters. "I don't know, I think people are underestimating me just because I screwed up and lost my bending that time."

"I see. If she argued that you're not competent enough to fight Noatak, then what did she say, exactly?"

Korra sullenly sits down opposite from him. She holds up her left hand and counts on her fingers. "Okay. She said that Noatak's probably spent a lot of time planning to fight me me, and that therefore it'd be better if she confronted him instead, because then he wouldn't know what he was dealing with. She also said that if I fought Noatak, there's a risk I might go into the Avatar state, and that might be what he actually wants because then if he killed me he could end the Avatar cycle forever. Which is stupid, because I know I wouldn't have to go into the Avatar state just to deal with Noatak - I think I know how to fight a bloodbender now, because bloodbenders are only really dangerous if they catch you by surprise, and-"

Tarrlok holds up a hand to tell her to pause. "If she's gone off to find Noatak, then wouldn't she want you along in case you'd be required to take Noatak's bending?"

Korra screws up her face, takes a good five seconds to choose her reply, then says, "No."

"Why?"

"She said I'd never done anything like that before, and that it could be dangerous."

Tarrlok leans back slightly. "Wait. _Could_ you take someone's bending, if need be?"

"Probably. Maybe I could if I was, uh, in danger." Korra plucks a blade of grass and rolls it between her fingers, and admits, "No one's ever told me how it works. I'm guessing it's like restoring someone's bending, but... In reverse? I've sort got an idea what it'd be like, but I couldn't explain it."

"Oh." Well that's... not what he was expecting. "I just assumed you'd be able to do it."

"I'm not Aang," Korra grumbles, and Tarrlok gets the impression that people frequently remind her of this. 

"Well, that's not a bad thing," Tarrlok says, before a different thought occurs to him. "You know, if you fight Noatak and you can't take his bending, there's a chance you'll have to kill him. You've considered this, right?"

"Yeah, I guess, I uh..." Korra gives him an uneasy look. "Do you want me to kill him?"

Tarrlok feels a bit like he's just been kicked in the ribs. "I want you to do whatever's required to keep people safe."

"If I don't kill him, he'll probably spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement, so-"

"Yes, that has crossed my mind," Tarrlok says, standing up. He brushes dry grass and polar bear dog hair off his clothing. "But we haven't even found him yet. Let's get moving."

Korra seems happy to drop the subject, and whistles for Naga.

\--

When it gets dark, they stop by a river. Korra dismounts, then takes a bedroll from the pannier on Naga's saddle. She throws the bedroll over to Tarrlok.

"You can get some sleep, and I'll keep watch," she says.

Tarrlok eyes the bedroll and feels like he's being patronized.

"When I start to fall asleep, I'll wake you up and we can swap places," Korra adds. 

"I could take first watch," Tarrlok replies. It's an odd situation. He's a thirty-seven year-old male (though he's thirty-five if anyone asks), and she's a teenage girl. Perhaps it's best if he avoids thinking about it, otherwise they'll just make him angry. Though he's not entirely sure who he should be angry at. Himself, probably.

Korra shakes her head. "You look more tired than me."

Tarrlok still wants to argue for the sake of his pride, but he reminds himself that his pride isn't worth very much. He finds a patch of ground that's relatively flat, and lays out the bedroll. Then he looks back at Korra, tries to think of something to say, decides that he's too exhausted, and settles down for the night.

\--

"Tarrlok?"

It feels like he's barely been asleep for a few minutes. Tarrlok blinks, and makes himself sit upright.

Korra is sitting cross-legged next to him, her face illuminated by a flame in her hand. "It's time to, uh, swap," she says, and yawns.

Fine. Tarrlok drags himself out of the bedroll.

Korra stands, wanders over to where her polar bear dog is curled up, and flops down on top of the animal. She rests her head on the nape of its neck. The polar bear dog doesn't even stir.

"Are you going to sleep like that?" Tarrlok mutters.

"Whuh?"

"I said, are you going to sleep like that?"

Korra doesn't lift her head. "Yeah."

"Don't you want a blanket?"

"No."

"I can get you a blanket."

"Didn't pack one. Night, Tarrlok,"

Tarrlok pauses, and thinks. "You did bring a bedroll for yourself, didn't you?"

Korra lets out a long-suffering sigh. "No point. Naga's warm."

Tarrlok throws up his hands. "You can't just go gallivanting across the countryside with a man and only take one bedroll."

Korra now looks up. Her face is a picture of abject frustration. "Tarrlok. I don't care. Nobody cares. Shut up."

"It's improper," Tarrlok says, as accusingly as he can muster.

"Why?!"

"People will assume things."

"Oh for-... Like what?!"

" _Things_ ," Tarrlok says, with just the right inflection.

Korra is silent while she figures out what he means, then makes a noise that's a cross between a laugh and a snort. "Okay. No. _Night_ , Tarrlok." She flops against the polar bear dog again.

Tarrlok just goes to sit by a tree so he can nurse his wounded ego for the rest of the night.

\--

Tarrlok wakes to the the sound of Korra swearing. He had no idea that he dozed off. He sits bolt upright. Is she swearing at him? Has she noticed that he's been asleep when he was meant to be keeping watch?

Apparently not. Korra is still curled up against Naga, though now she's sitting up and rubbing her eyes. Naga has lifted its head and is watching Korra intently. The sky is orange-grey. It's probably still some time before dawn. 

"Everything alright?" Tarrlok asks, standing up so he can move nearer to Korra.

"Yeah, fine," Korra mumbles. Naga starts licking her face, and she lets out a sad little laugh. "Knock it off. Your breath stinks."

Her voice doesn't sound quite right, so Tarrlok asks, "What's wrong?"

Korra looks him up and down as if she's trying to figure out the ulterior motive behind his show of concern, then says, "I said I'm fine."

Tarrlok should shrug and let the matter drop without saying anything further - but, without thinking, he ends up saying, "Sorry." The word just slips out. It makes his teeth itch.

Tarrlok goes to sit back by his tree.

Korra gently pushes Naga's huge head away (though Naga still succeeds licking Korra's hands), and keeps watching him. Then she says, "It's nothing important. Just a bad dream. Stupid, right?"

"Not necessarily," Tarrlok says. The Avatar is meant to be prophetic. If she's having nightmares, then he hopes it's just because she's been sleeping irregular hours and eating the wrong sort of food. Nothing sinister. "I suppose that when you were with the White Lotus, you had a team of sages to interpret your dreams for you."

Korra forces a smile. "Yeah. It was great. I'd be like, 'last night I dreamt that Naga was a giant mantou on legs and I had to stop her from eating herself,' or 'last night I dreamt that I was in an opera about my life but I couldn't sing and the audience booed me off stage and they had to get someone else to play me', and the sages would go away and consult their scrolls and then come back and be like..." She clears her throat, and affects a deep voice, "'Avatar Korra, after great consideration, we've concluded that you need to stop eating jerky before bedtime'."

Tarrlok smiles back, despite himself. 

"Anyway," Korra says, taking a deep breath, "We might as well get going again. I don't think I'll be getting back to sleep."

Right, that sounds fair enough. Tarrlok doesn't want to sit around for any longer. He goes to collect his bedroll, while Naga stands up and pokes Korra in the ribs with its nose.

"Do you ever dream about Aang?" Tarrlok asks, as an aside.

Korra hesitates for a second. "Not really, no. Why?" She looks suspicious again. "Do you actually want to know what I dream about?"

Tarrlok shakes his head. "It's alright. I don't mean to be nosy."

Korra hops up onto Naga's saddle. "Okay, listen. I just... I had this dream where I was in Republic City but the streets looked different, and there was this thing that sounded like... I don't know... Anyway, this thing was chasing me, and... I'm not gonna bore you with all of it, but I had to ask people for help, and they looked at me like I was, uh... something gross, and then they started pointing and yelling so the thing would kill me."

Korra looks down, and runs her fingers through the fur of Naga's neck.

"I wasn't scared, though," Korra adds. "It just bugged me because it was strange. But dreams are usually weird, right? Like, the other night I dreamed was in a library and I ate a book, and the book screamed at me so loud the entire time that the librarian kicked me out."

"That sounds about normal," Tarrlok says, though he's not quite sure what would be considered a 'normal' dream, given that he usually zones out whenever people start talking about such things. The kind of people who talk about their dreams are generally only slightly less awful than the kind of people who talk about their bowel movements. But he knows that dreams are always either nonsensical, horrifying, or a combination thereof.

"Yeah, maybe," Korra says, a bit quieter now. She holds out a hand so she can help Tarrlok up into the saddle. He only hesitates briefly before accepting the help.

\--

The countryside looks the same after a while. Fields, grassland, trees, more fields, more grassland, more trees. Tarrlok should enjoy his freedom, but the boredom saps some of the joy out of it.

They look for ways to pass the time. Korra challenges him to a throat-singing competition. When he states that men don't engage in throat-singing competitions (and that he's been emasculated enough already, thank you), Korra calls him a wuss who's afraid of losing. Tarrlok points out that if they're trying to keep a low profile, then perhaps a throat singing competition is a bad idea. Korra still calls him a wuss. Tarrlok then refrains from talking to her for an entire hour afterwards.

The two of them also enjoy a heated argument over the fact that Korra's hair keeps hitting Tarrlok in the face.

When they run out of small talk, they lapse into an uneasy silence that's only broken by the sound of Naga's breathing and the steady thud of paws hitting the ground. Tarrlok zones out a little, lulled by the rhythm of Naga's feet. Tarrlok finds himself becoming comfortable with riding a polar bear dog. Tarrlok becomes a little too comfortable. Tarrlok falls asleep. Tarrlok falls off the saddle.

He finds himself on the floor.

"Oh crap, are you okay?" Korra asks, standing over him. She looks genuinely worried. Maybe she feels some residual guilt about knocking him out earlier.

Tarrlok lies flat on his back and looks up at the girl. "Please stop swearing. It's extremely tacky."

"Yeah, you're fine," Korra says, and climbs back up onto Naga without offering Tarrlok a hand up.

Tarrlok picks himself up off the ground and dusts himself off. He gets back on Korra's horrible animal.

"Uh, maybe you should put your arms around my waist now," Korra says, as if it was his fault he fell off.

"Do you think I might fall off again? I'm don't intend to fall off twice, Korra."

"Just hold on to me or something," Korra grumbles.

Well, as she's the one who suggested it, fine. Tarrlok puts his arms around Korra's waist. She feels solid and warm in ways that he doesn't really want to think about.

The two of them just sit there for a moment, while Naga sniffs a patch of grass.

Korra is the first one to speak: "Okay. Maybe you..."

Tarrlok can imagine what's going through her head: _I feel like I'm getting hugged by a weird uncle._ (Which is funny, because Korra does have a weird uncle, and Tarrlok was once mistaken for him at a public function. Maybe he should've played along with it, and then people might've let him rule the Northern Water Tribe for a while.)

"No, I don't think this will work," he says, very carefully, and lets go.

"Okay. If you say so." It's difficult to tell if Korra is relieved, or just slightly confused.

Tarrlok goes back to hanging onto the saddle. He decides to pass the time by attempting to identify every tree in sight.

\--

They avoid towns and villages, keeping to the countryside. This prevents Tarrlok from attempting to contact the White Lotus - and, in a way, he's grateful for this, though he knows he won't be able to explain himself when he has to speak with Katara again.

Korra catches catches food for the two of them. This doesn't do much to improve Tarrlok's mood. 

He's reasonably sure that he could still hunt without his bending. However, bending would make it much easier. If he was on his own, he'd have to hunt - but with Korra present, there's just no point. It's just more efficient to have her do the work. (Besides, there's also the fact that he hasn't needed to catch his own meals for twenty years, and really, hasn't he always hated hunting anyway?)

When their journey takes them close to the sea shore, Korra catches a crab, brings it to Tarrlok, points at the crab, stares Tarrlok dead in the eye, and says, "Look. It's you."

"Excuse me," Tarrlok says, sitting by the small fire that Korra's managed to create out of some driftwood, "How old are you meant to be, again?"

"Seventeen. How old are you?"

"Well, you..." Tarrlok begins, then catches her question. He choose to not answer. "...Don't act like it."

"I was going to give you this crab, you know," Korra mutters.

"Oh." 

Korra hands him the crab. It wiggles its legs.

Tarrlok is now faced with two choices: kill the crab and risk making a horrible mess of it, or admit that he has no idea how to kill the thing. He sighs, and offers the crab back to her. "Thanks. Can you do the honors?"

Korra shrugs. "Sure."

"Most of the villages where I lived while growing up were rather far from the sea."

"Okay."

"And my father never really bothered to teach us fishing."

Korra picks up a stone, shapes it into a spike, and uses it to stab through the shell. "Uh huh."

"And I don't know how to prepare crab anyway," he adds, before telling himself to shut up.

"Mhm," Korra says, fashioning the stone into a knife so she can dress the crab. She gives him one of the claws.

Tarrlok peels away the outer layers to get to the meat. He goes to eat it, then pauses. It smells like salt water.

Tarrlok doesn't want to taste salt water ever again.

"You know, I don't want to sound ungrateful, but I don't think I'm hungry," he says.

Korra arches her brows and gives him a look that's annoyingly parental. "You haven't eaten since this morning."

"Like I say, I'm not hungry."

Korra stops what she's doing, and eyes him, speculative once more. She then seems to dismiss whatever's on her mind, and starts to eat the crab by herself.

Tarrlok just sits there and feels like a prize idiot.

Korra wipes some sand off her hands and onto her clothes, and asks him, absently, "You thinking about your brother?"

"Not really."

Korra looks at him like she doesn't believe that. "You've been crankier than usual ever since we got close to the sea," she says. "You want to talk about anything?"

"Like what?"

Korra seems thoughtful, and asks through a mouthful of crab meat, "What was Noatak like, when you knew him?"

"I don't know," Tarrlok says. "Smart. Quiet." And generally kind, so you knew that whenever he lost his temper with you, you knew that you'd really done something wrong.

"And?" Korra prompts.

"Patient."

"If I have to fight this guy, I want to understand him better," Korra says. "Is that all you remember?"

Tarrlok surrenders. "Alright, fine, he used to make up ghost stories, he had an incredibly stupid sense of humor, he was surprisingly good at singing, and he was a terrible pai sho opponent because he'd get bored and just let me win. Or he'd cheat. But he'd never cheat the same way twice. I think that finding new ways to cheat was the only reason why he played the game. Also he never used to change his socks often enough, which was disgusting. Is that enough? Because I don't know how any of this is meant to help."

"Wait. Amon can sing?"

"Probably."

"Can you sing?"

"No."

Korra manages to keep a straight face. "If you sing something, I'll sing something."

"I'm not singing."

"Fine." Korra sits in silence for a few seconds, probably trying to wrap her head around a few interesting mental images, and then she says, "What do you think happened to him? Between him running away and all the Equalist stuff, I mean."

"No idea," Tarrlok says. He knows that the world wouldn't have been particularly kind to a fourteen-year-old runaway from a small village, but that's all. "If you're trying to get inside his head, I wouldn't bother. It won't excuse anything he's done, and there's no point empathizing with someone who you might need to kill."

"Yeah, but..." Korra trails off. Her mouth hangs open slightly, and Tarrlok wants to tell her to stop looking so gormless.

"You want to tell me I'm wrong, but you can't think of a good argument for it," says Tarrlok.

"No. I just... I mean, I know he's a crappy human being, and I know you don't have to like the guy just because he's your brother, but I still get the feeling that you care about him."

"Then I'm the one who's best qualified to tell you that he's a lost cause," Tarrlok replies. "If you somehow let him live, then what? He'll spend the rest of his life in some Fire Nation prison? Because my father told me about those places, and I doubt they've improved much over the past thirty-odd years."

Korra says nothing.

Tarrlok adds, "The more you think about Noatak as a person, the more difficult it'll be to execute him. And if there's any doubt about your ability to kill someone in cold blood, then perhaps you should leave him to Katara."

"I know what I'm doing," Korra mutters.

Tarrlok rolls his eyes. "It's all very well fighting someone when you're angry... But you can't be angry all the time - and when you're not angry, you're far too soft and credulous. You're arbitrary and temperamental and you lack self-control."

Korra now raises her eyebrows. "Alright, now you've gone and turned this conversation around so you're attacking me again. Do you actually enjoy criticising me, or what?"

"I'm just being honest."

"No, you're being an asshole."

"Korra, you're the Avatar. People are going to say unpleasant things about you during your entire life, and occasionally these people will be telling the truth. The sooner you get used to it, the better."

Korra gives him a look of frustration, and puts the half-eaten crab on the ground, possibly so that she's not tempted to throw it at him. "That doesn't mean it's okay for you to be a dick to me."

Tarrlok shrugs. "I'm just saying that you could stand to grow a thicker skin."

"What, like you, you mean?" Korra says, bristling for a fight. "Because you're so thick-skinned?"

"I was a politician," Tarrlok says, simply.

Korra sticks out her chin, looks him right in the eye, and says, "You're pathetic, creepy, and weird, and you act like a jerk because it's the only way you can get attention and you're really lonely." Then she watches him as if she wants to see his reaction.

Tarrlok just sits there. He sits there, and he tells himself, _fine, alright, now she's just being childish. She's a little less than half my age. I'm not going to let her get under my skin. That would be absurd. Maybe I'm just a little over-sensitive because I'm tired._

And now Korra is staring at him. "I didn't mean it," she says quickly. 

Tarrlok struggles to think of a way to convince her that he's not offended.

Korra's face betrays the dawning horror of a girl who's just realized that she needs a large hook, some chains, a team of sled dogs, and a gallon of seal oil just to remove her foot from her mouth. "Look Tarrlok I'm really really sorry and I uh..."

Great, what sort of expression does Tarrlok have right now? He tries to adjust it so it looks less... _however it looks_ at the moment. He laughs. "Don't worry. I've heard much worse."

This doesn't seem to reassure Korra at all. She looks as if she's about to run away and throw herself in the sea.

"Can you please stop staring at me like-" Tarrlok begins.

Korra lunges, and Tarrlok finds himself in the death-grip of a teenage girl. She wraps her arms around his torso in a move that looks suspiciously like a wrestling hold.

He manages to ask, "Wait, what are you doing?"

"I'm hugging you!" Korra says, indignant. 

Oh, okay, for a moment there he thought she was trying to murder him again. "Ah, very well, fine, can you relax a little? Before I pass out?"

Korra relents slightly, and turns her head so she can scowl up at him. "Tarrlok. Listen. I didn't mean what I said."

"No, seriously, I'm not being sarcastic. You're crushing my ribs," Tarrlok says.

Korra releases him, and sits back. "I don't think you're pathetic, and you've been through a lot lately so I really should've have said anything like that," she insists.

Tarrlok actually feels slightly better for the hug, although he'd rather eat both of his shoes than admit that out loud. (A quiet voice at the back of his mind says: _how sad did I look just then? And am I actually more endearing when I look sad? If I look sad enough, can I use it to make people give me things? Because I thought that stopped working when I was eleven._ )

"Honestly," he says, using the tone that he once used when issuing orders, "don't worry. I'm actually tougher than I look." And in retrospect, it seems unfair that she's the one who has to apologize, given that he was criticizing her barely two minutes ago... But, then again, the apology seemed kind of... charitable, so Tarrlok quickly decides to just stop thinking about the matter.

"Yeah," Korra says, still frowning. "Okay."

Tarrlok fakes a small smile, and lets the current conversation die a natural death. He watches the fire. Out the corner of his eye, he notices Korra doing the same. 

He tries to think of a way to lighten the mood.

(And no, he doesn't start singing.)

Then he puts his hands in his lap, and twiddles his thumbs. (Though the left thumb has to do most of the work. The right thumb is no longer a team player.) What should he talk about next? Should he ask Korra about her journey from the South Pole to Republic City? Should he ask her how she learned to survive by herself despite (presumably) spending most of her life under the watchful eye of the White Lotus? Should he-

Wait.

Tarrlok looks up just in time to see huge pale shape looming behind her, as if out of nowhere. Its beady eyes are fulled with ravenous hunger.

"Um," Tarrlok says, and points to the hairy, foul-smelling storm cloud loitering by Korra's left shoulder, "I think your-"

Korra looks to her left, to the half-eaten crab that she's left on the ground, but she's too late. Naga darts forwards. The beast's jaws make an audible 'gnomf' noise as they close around the crab. Then Naga lollops away across the sand dunes, tail held high in triumph.

"I WAS STILL EATING THAT CRAB," Korra yells in outrage, before springing to her feet and running after the bear dog.

"Like I say, temperamental," Tarrlok mutters, while Korra can't hear him.


	7. Winter, ASC 170

_Winter, ASC 170_

 

Despite the fever and exhaustion, the name 'Noatak' still clings to him. 

Sometimes, whenever he wakes up, there are a blissful few seconds where he can't remember who he is. Then his identity intrudes, and he's unable to fight it off. 

Years ago, he came to the conclusion that an identity was just a story you told yourself: _I am so-and-so. My relatives are blah blah blah. I was born wherever, in the year of whatever. Certain things have happened to me, and because of these things, I have adopted certain beliefs and habits, and so on_. People would repeat their stories to themselves over and over, and that was how they maintained the idea of a continuous personality.

Change the story, change the person.

But he remembers (or rather, he tells yet another story to himself) when he was small, and his mother once caught him trying to convince Tarrlok that the old lady who ran the storehouse was actually a Fire Nation spy. His mother mother had delivered a small lecture about untruths: "Some stories have legs," she'd said. "Once they're out there, you don't have any control over them."

Being small, he'd taken that literally, and imagined all the stories roaming around the countryside (on their legs), causing trouble.

Noatak's story dogs him. It stalks him across grasslands, through salt marshes, along the coastline. It's a pity he can't leave it at a temple so someone else can take care of it. He suspects that his neglect is warping it into something vicious.

There are moments where feels like his short-term memory is being devoured by his long-term memory. Thoughts keep slipping from his grasp: one moment he's thinking about something, and the next moment, it's just _gone_ , leaving behind a vague sense of absence. Sometimes the entire world seems to come out of nowhere, too loud and bright, and he realizes that he can't recall what he was doing previously. Yet his long-term memory is fine. He spends a lot of time looking backwards. Or he spends a lot of time looking over his shoulder, anyway.

He could blame a lot of things on his poor health. The burns on his back itch constantly, and he doesn't dare scratch them. He's always too hot or too cold. He recognises the symptoms of an infection. He's not entirely stupid. Yet he's in no rush to find a healer. Finding a healer seems like more effort than it's worth.

He must be bored. The days blur into each other.

He has no idea how long it's been since he left Tarrlok.

He wanders east. It's only the landscape that changes. 

In some respects, it's like being a youth again: no job, no home, no commitments. He gives some thought as to how he managed to say sane back then, and concludes must've been sustained purely by hope. His father had convinced him that he was destined for great things and, even though the old man was crazier than a sack of wet cats, a lot of his lessons had still kept Noatak alive.

It's a dangerous weapon, hope. You know how you get stories about people who discover wondrous artifacts and are corrupted by their power? Hope's a little like that. When you lose it, you wish you'd never had it in the first place.

His mind keeps returning to something Tarrlok said once: I suppose it's like being put in a cell and watching the door close.

 _Something_ wants him to think about Tarrlok a lot.

For a while, his mind keeps repeating: Tarrlok tried to kill me. His brain gets stuck on that thought like a needle in a grove, until it becomes so irritating that he tries to push it away. Then the thought changes. It becomes: Tarrlok tried to kill you.

Tarrlok tried to kill you.

Tarrlok tried to kill you.

Tarrlok tried to kill you.

"Yes, I'm aware," he says out loud, on a day when he's particularly tired of wallowing in his own misery.

Tarrlok tried to kill you.

"I know. Thank you. Shut up." His voice sounds more like Noatak's now. Not someone else's. He sounds gruff and peevish. Apparently Noatak is becoming a grumpy old fart.

He hopes that he doesn't get into a habit of talking to himself. That seems like a bit of a cliché. 

"What's next?" he asks one evening, while he's struggling to clean a fish without breaking its spine. He sits at the side of a river with a simple ice knife in his right hand, though he has to concentrate in order to make the blade hold its edge. "Am I going to start hallucinating? Because you could stand to be more original."

Ah, but madness is, by and large, extremely predictable. Whenever a character goes mad, it always follows a tidy arc: there's the event that instigates the madness (beginning), then the descent into unreality (middle), culminating in a loss of self-control that leads to self-destruction (end).

"You know what might make a nice change?" Noatak muses. "A story where the afflicted character makes a complete recovery."

Can you think of many stories where that happens, though?

Thought not.

"That's a little harsh," says Noatak, then swears as the tip of the ice knife snaps off.

Well, whenever a character ends up in a self-destructive spiral, they only break free from it when another character intervenes and rescues them. A story like that would be a romance, not a tragedy. A meditation on the redemptive power of love and whatnot. Assuming that the afflicted character is actually _deserving_ of love.

"...Ah," says Noatak.

Yeah, sorry son. You're screwed.

"Though isn't it strange how the majority of stories frame love as being an inherently positive force?" Noatak says. "In the real world, people do a lot of silly things for the sake of love. I wouldn't put too much stock in it."

You're so self-absorbed that you _would_ say that.

"My point still stands," Noatak says. "Anyway. Shush."

Would you like to go back to thinking about how Tarrlok tried to kill you?

"You know, I could really do with a good book right now," Noatak says. "Or one of those puzzles you get in newspapers. Something to pass the time."

You don't understand the full implications yet.

"Not the math puzzles, though," Noatak says.

Your Lieutenant always completed the math puzzles before you could. After Sato explained to him how they worked. Sato rather enjoyed explaining things to people.

"Trying to influence your audience with a crude appeal to sentiment is lazy storytelling," Noatak says, as he wipes water and fish grease off his hands and onto his clothes.

\--

Noatak waits for his fever to subside, but it persists.

A day comes when the heaviness in his limbs forces him to stop and sit by the side of a road. He manages to find some shelter behind a hedge, and rests awhile.

He dreams about a man standing over him. The man has a burned face, sad and accusing.

"Really?" Noatak says, staring back even though he's no longer sure if his eyes are open or closed. "I don't think so. No. We're not doing this."

\--

Even when Noatak is relatively lucid, he's still hounded by the sense that he's not alone. As he walks, he sees things at the edge of his vision. He thinks of ijirait, and listens out for whistling.

"If it's _you_ who's after me, then... Well. You're a shockingly unoriginal folk hero who I invented while drunk," Noatak says, when the silence threatens to suffocate him. "And if you think you can get to me, then you're wrong."

He then feels traitorous for saying that.

But it's also a little freeing.

Talking is difficult, but he keeps at it. (And besides, it doesn't matter if his speech is slurred - he knows what he means.) "And I mean, what, you want to be... a personification of my conscience? I'm not sure that I _have_ a conscience, and if I did, it wouldn't look like someone's ridiculous idea of a shaman with a two-bit tragic back story. You were like a protagonist out of the worst sort of pulp novel. You were juvenile."

That's unfair. There was never anything wrong with the idea of Amon. Amon had some humility. Noatak didn't.

Noatak stops, feeling ridiculous, and laughs. "Everyone liked you more than me."

Well, come on. What else would you expect? Maladjusted bloodbender assassin versus ordinary man who fights for justice with the help of the spirits? The latter was a MUCH more sympathetic character. Far more nuanced. And if Amon was ruthless, then that ruthlessness just gave him an extra dimension of moral ambiguity; it made him interesting. He was a good man who used questionable means. He wasn't a pathological criminal.

"I have no idea why I'm talking to you," Noatak says.

You're talking because you're weak-minded and you can't tolerate isolation. There's no one left for you to attack, so you're compelled to attack yourself. One might say that attacking things is all you're good for.

You should be put down.

"Go away," Noatak says. "I'm tired of you. You're... Actually very boring."

Not you, we. We're boring. Who do you think you're talking to? You should say: I'm boring. I bore myself.

Noatak decides to just stop thinking entirely.

\--

He stumbles upon a town, and the presence of human beings jolts him back into personhood. He still has enough money to buy a train ticket east. Travelling by train seems safer. The other passengers serve as a good distraction from everything. If he lets his mind wander, they look like tangles of liquid. He imagines picking them apart.

He catches his reflection in the window of the carriage. He looks sickly, though hopefully not so sickly that he'll attract unwanted attention. It's a balancing act: you need to look sufficiently disgusting in a way that repels people instead of drawing their curiosity.

It's a good thing he's had the sense to buy a hat that covers the bandages on his head, though he doesn't actually remember buying the hat. It's a terrible hat, however. He chose wisely. Apparently there's still a part of him that's thinking clearly, although it doesn't seem to be talking to him at the moment, just operating in the background like a stagehand.

He blinks awake when the train pulls into a station, and follows all the other bodies out to the platform. The station is small, filthy, quiet. A lot of the people have light brown skin and rounded Earth Kingdom features. He assumes he's in one of the former Fire Nation colonies, and he runs through the names of all the old towns in the central Earth Kingdom that were invaded during the war, then it occurs to him to _actually look at a sign_ that should tell him where he is.

The sign on the station wall says Ruyi.

That's somewhere in the Fei Cui Province, if he remembers correctly. Hopefully the United Forces will encounter some resistance if they try to follow him from this point. The powers of the Fei Cui Province have never been very amenable to outside interference.

Ruyi looks like a town that's as good as any.

 _Right,_ he thinks, _I'm done._

\-- 

The Ruyi Peninsula is a long stretch of land that juts from out the southern Earth Kingdom coast, shaped like... well, shaped like a ruyi. It bears a small mining town that shares its name.

There are no tourist brochures about it. Wei has checked.

The town hasn't featured too much in any of the region's newspapers, either. Apparently nothing interesting ever happens there. In some ways, this might be a good thing (Wei has heard rumors about the sort of stuff that goes on in the area, and he figures that the locals should be good at minding their own business), yet it does nothing to assuage his suspicion that he's been utterly removed from the world of Important Stuff, and demoted to the land of Irrelevant Shit.

This is not the life he envisioned a few months ago. 

The only thing that makes him feel a little better is Jing's weird enthusiasm about the train journey to the peninsula. Jing purchases a note pad and some charcoal before they leave Kosen, and the two of them spend the journey discussing how steam engines, writing and drawing instead of talking out loud. It quickly becomes apparent that Jing already knows how an internal combustion engine works, but he's curious about improvements in boiler design. Wei writes 'you're a fucking nerd', then begins to explain that steam is pretty much obsolete anyway. And, as Wei writes, a strange feeling of irritation itches deep within his bones. 

It takes Wei a moment to figure out who the feeling actually belongs to. Jing stops responding.

 _Hello?_ Wei scrawls.

 _There's so much to learn. We're so out of touch,_ Jing writes back. He has the nicest handwriting Wei has ever seen.

Wei writes: _What do you mean?_

Jing shakes his head, and doesn't write anything else for the rest of the journey.

\--

When Wei reaches Ruyi and disembarks, Jing takes one step out of the carriage, then sneezes so hard that Wei tastes blood. Things don't improve when they leave the cramped little station and exit onto the street; Jing rubs his nose and sniffs, and Wei is struck by the stink of fuel, oil, rotten fish, limestone, soap, sweat, sewage, fried food, laundry powder, coal smoke, chemicals, _so many different chemicals_ , and...

Just for a second, the world is full of ghosts. Ghosts of objects, ghosts of people, blurred outlines cutting swathes through time. It's awful: the past has already been written and can't be changed, and the past determines the present.

Everything is mapped out in trails of information. The trails make patterns. The patterns burn.

Wei blinks. A jab of white hot pain stabs behind his temples.

Wei holds a handkerchief over the lower half of his face, and marches through forgettable streets until he finds an alleyway where he can talk to himself like a nutcase in private.

"Okay, I think I just hallucinated," Wei says. "Was that because of you? It was you, wasn't it?"

"Huh," Jing says. "You alright?" 

"No."

"I... I'm not sure what happened, but I think you might've just picked up some of my, what do you call it, perceptions?"

"What do you mean?"

"I work differently to you, so uh, maybe sometimes I'll pick up on things that would normally be outside your, um, scope of comprehension. And as I'm borrowing your body right now, there might be some..."

"Crosstalk?"

"I'm not sure what crosstalk actually is, but it sounds right."

"Yeah, well, it hurt." 

"Sorry!"

Wei thinks about overcurrents, although they don't really fit with the 'crosstalk' analogy he just used. "Kinda felt like a bit of my brain just melted."

"Oh dear," Jing murmurs, and blows his nose on the handkerchief. "I'll be more careful in future, okay?"

Wei swallows back the taste of metal. "I need a drink."

"You can have _tea_ ," Jing says, very gently. 

\--

Once they find a tea house (albeit one with tobacco brown walls and sticky tables), they perch on the edge of a splintery bench and they take out the note pad again. Wei sets the bow - hidden in its suitcase - on the floor between his feet, and keeps a close eye on it.

Wei can't help leaning over the note pad to shield it from view, although the tea house is almost empty and no one's sitting nearby.

 _Is our guy really in this town?_ Wei writes. He can't quite believe it. Then again, he can't quite believe a lot of things, like the fact that he's currently talking to a brain-eating fox-dog-whatever that's living inside his head. (He's still not sure if he should just book himself into the nearest asylum before Jing starts telling him to randomly murder people.)

 _Yes. I still need to pinpoint his exact location, though,_ Jing replies. The charcoal hovers over the paper for a few seconds, then writes, _I tried to pick up his scent after we left the train station, but you reacted badly._

Wei takes a moment to drink his tea. It doesn't do much to shift the metallic taste from his mouth.

 _Is that what gave me the headache?_ Wei writes. _You just tried to smell the guy? That's all you did?_

_Yes._

_That is your schtick?_ Wei writes. _You got_ \- he doodles a little circle on the paper as he thinks, then almost writes 'smellography', then puts, _super-smell?_

Jing shrugs. _I'm a hunter. I suppose so._

Wei sits there for a moment and mulls over that.

 _What?_ Jing writes.

Wei struggles to think of a good way to explain the patterns he saw, though perhaps 'saw' is the wrong verb.

 _Smell is the best sense,_ Jing writes. _Not only can you tell where something is, but where it was previously, and when it was, and what it was._

 _Yeah, about that,_ Wei replies. _When you did your weird smell thing outside the train station, it felt like I was getting stabbed in the head._

Jing twirls the charcoal stick between his fingers. Then he writes: _But when you were unconscious and I was controlling your body, I was able to do things like that without causing you any distress. I don't see why it would be a problem now unless-_ Jing doesn't finish the sentence.

 _Unless?_ Wei writes.

Jing fidgets, then takes his glasses out his pocket and polishes the lenses on his sleeve, clearly taking time to formulate a reply.

Wei doesn't bother waiting, but puts the glasses down and writes, _You're saying I have to be out cold in order for you to do spirit stuff without fucking me up?_

 _Possibly. I don't know,_ Jing writes. _It's strange. Or maybe it's not strange at all. Maybe human minds just can't tolerate some things. Maybe that's why the Avatar has to shift to a different level of consciousness when using the Avatar State._

_What do you know about the Avatar?_ Wei scrawls. 

_I know I don't want to fight her right now,_ Jing replies, pressing the charcoal hard against the paper. _And I know that you already have enough to worry about._

Well, that's true, but...

Jing resumes writing: _Anyway, I'd hypothesize that ordinary human consciousness can only process a certain amount of energy? information? at any given time, and that once a certain limit has been surpassed, it triggers a stress reaction._

 _Overcurrent_ , Wei thinks again. Although maybe that's not the best metaphor.

 _You're saying the signal exceeds my threshold so it gets clipped and distorted and that screws things up,_ Wei says, then re-reads it and thinks, _what the fuck did I just write?_

 _You've lost me,_ Jing replies. 

_Never mind,_ Wei writes, since he's now managed to confuse the both of them.

 _So,_ Jing continues, _will it be okay for me to try picking up his scent again? Or would you prefer to search for him using_ \- there's a small pause, _normal means?_

Wei sighs. _You do spirit magic smell thing. Leave me awake. Will cope if get headache._

 _So I have your permission?_ Jing writes.

 _You need my permission for anything?_ Wei scowls at the paper. He suspects that Jing is being disingenuous.

 _Yes!_ Jing writes. _If I force you to do stuff, then we won't function very well as a team, and we'll be inefficient. And you will also think I'm a jerk._

 _Do what's necessary,_ Wei writes.

Jing draws a little stick figure of a man saluting.

\--

Wei waits for Jing to finish wolfing down a side order of sin zuk gyun (which tastes suspiciously like cigarette ash), and then they head back outside. It's mid-morning. Ruyi is all green and grey, with cobbled streets and squat buildings speckled with moss and soot.

Wei wants to stand by the tea house's gateway and stare at everything, but Jing starts walking, and Wei doesn't resist. Wei remembers what the spirit said when they first met - _You'll still be in control of yourself_ \- but in some ways, it's kind of nice to let someone else handle things.

Jing seeks out another alleyway, one with boarded-up windows and walls that are covered in a stinky dusting of algae. A twisted old bicycle rusts in one corner. Wei assesses it. He always rates alleyways on a scale of 1 to 10: 10 being 'excellent for sleeping in', 5 being 'a place where people might engage in a very depressing sexual activity', and 1 being 'good hiding place for a corpse'. This alleyway rates somewhere between a 5 and a 6.

"Why did you take me here?" Wei asks.

"Uh. For privacy?" Jing says.

"Can't we just get another hotel room?" Wei asks, then wants to kick himself. Hotels are a bad idea. The more places you check into, the more of a trail you leave behind.

Jing raises his eyebrows. "You like staying in hotel rooms?"

"They're alright," Wei mutters, while he pointedly avoids thinking about warm floors, high ceilings, and thick blankets. "You gonna do your tracking thing, then?"

"You ready?"

"Yeah, sure." Wei braces himself. This situation reminds him of the last time he told one of the chi blockers to zap him with a shock glove. It didn't hurt. Much.

Jing cracks his knuckles, and breathes in. 

The entire world unfolds. It's like putting on glasses: he realizes that there's so much he's always failed to notice, layers upon layers of information, infinitely complex, and yet ordinary: the din of soap and cooking and effluence from the surrounding houses, the greenish miasma of stagnant water and exhaust fumes from the docks, the bright little specks of rats in unseen places, the iridescent stink of humans and their bodies. Someone, in an apartment a few storeys above, is currently eating an over-ripe peach, and a house few blocks away contains an elderly owl cat that's fond of licking the furniture, and just two days ago, someone dropped their jian bing on the street twenty paces away and a dog ran off with it, and yesterday some kind of large weird carnivore took a crap on the south dock after disembarking from an Fire Nation steam ship that had a hold full of rugs. But there are other things, too: the land is ancient, and the smell of humanity is just a sand mandala on time's surface, mutable and bright. Wei tries to keep his mind fixed on the patterns that he recognizes, because there are other, older patterns that are utterly alien, and he doesn't want them to notice that he's aware of them.

He picks out details that sort of make sense. His awareness gravitates to the familiar. There's a spiral that gives him a shock of recognition. Male. Healthy once, but now exhausted and sickly. Cut off from its herd. Easy to corner. Still dangerous, but the risk is negligible. And it's well within a day's walking distance. Convenient and worthwhile.

Then Wei remembers that this spiral represents a human being, not _prey_ , and he loses his focus. There's something horribly intimate about how he can recognize the bloodbender's scent.

The sand mandala is scattered by the wind, revealing a maze of curves, endlessly repeating on itself, infinite beyond his comprehension, and he gets the distinct impression that he's not meant to be seeing this stuff, and then his brain just kind of holds its hands up and says, 'You know what, fuck this, it's giving me motion sickness.'

Wei blinks back into reality, which comes rushing in on a wave of grey. Everything looks like it's made from damp cardboard.

The first thing he's aware of is Jing's voice (which is technically _his_ voice, but smoother somehow): "Hey, I found our guy! He's sleeping in a train tunnel a mile north from here, and I know the route he'll take to find food!"

"Okay. Great," Wei says, then falls to his knees and is violently ill.

The alleyway goes dark, as if someone has drawn a shutter down over the sun.

\--

Wei is back in the courtyard with the high walls. He's sitting at a table. The red theater is still there, glistening wetly in the light from the lanterns, but the stage is empty.

On the table in front of Wei is a block of wood and a set of whittling tools.

He picks up the wood and examines the grain. It's a little too pale to see it properly, but it seems dense and straight; the wood is probably cypress. He runs his fingers over it, and finds it pleasantly warm.

He reaches for a chisel, and begins to gouge into the perfect surface. The wood yields to him.

\--

Wei wakes up in what is - presumably - another hotel room. It's not as fancy as the last one. There's a crack in the ceiling. 

He's already sitting on the edge of a bed, drinking a cup of water, which is a novel experience. You're usually lying down when you wake up. But no, Wei is already bolt upright and holding a cup against his bottom lip. Or Jing's holding the cup against his bottom lip, whatever. Wei rolls his shoulders, just to assure himself that he's in control.

He takes a moment to figure out where he's meant to be. Ruyi. Last he knew, he was in Ruyi. 

He can remember what happened, and he's still wearing the same clothes, which is usually a good sign.

Right. Words. He has to use words.

He gulps down the water, then says, "Did... did what I uh..." No, let's start again. "...Did I pass out or did you make me pass out?"

"I made you pass out," Jing says. He sounds just as rough as Wei.

"Okay, thanks," Wei says. He has no strong feelings about this. He saw some weird shit. He was sick. He passed out. It's cool. 'See weird shit, throw up, pass out' describes a typical night on the town for some people.

"Are you feeling better now?" Jing asks. 

"Mmhm." Wei feels kind of floaty. He puts the cup down, concentrating so he doesn't spill it. Out the corner of his eye, he glimpses a whirl in the plaster on the room's walls. It seems to move. He glances away.

Jing sighs. "You're not going to fall over and start, uh..." He makes a very evocative hand gesture from his stomach to his mouth. "Um, you know... Again?" 

Wei still feels so fucked up that he half-expects spiders to start coming out of the ceiling at any moment, but he answers with, "Don't rightly think so."

"Good. Because that was horrible. That has to be the single worst thing your body has ever done. It was disgusting. I didn't know bodies could DO things like that. I didn't _want_ to know that bodies could do things like that. It was _uncivilized_. I mean, the... The heaving... With the... Stomach cramp that felt like you were trying to turn yourself inside-out... That was just... _No_."

"All I did was puke, kiddo," Wei says.

"Well, I didn't like it."

Wei grunts, and lies back down on the bed.

He gets to lie down for a whole three seconds, and then Jing says, "No. Up. Walk it off. You need fresh air," and hauls him to his feet.

They grab their suitcase that contains the bow, then stagger back outside.

\--

They wander around the town for a while, squinting against the daylight. Wei lets Jing lead, as he doesn't feel too great, and he's not sure if he dares to look at the cobblestones underfoot in case they start re-arranging themselves. Sometimes he sees after-images of patterns when he blinks.

Jing limbers up as he walks, recovering quickly, although he still scowls the entire time.

Jing wanders through winding streets, passing housewives and old people and small children, until he comes to a crumbling building in a quiet area. Jing pauses, and looks up at the building's roof. He stands there and scratches his chin. Then he moves to a side of the building that's more sheltered from the street, attaches a strap to the suitcase's handle, and slings the strap crosswise over his torso. (Or Wei's torso. Whatever.) 

Jing takes one quick look around before pressing himself against a section of wall that's not covered by plaster.

"Can I climb this wall?" Jing asks.

"I don't know," Wei replies. "Can you?"

Jing just says, "Hm," and runs his palms over the exposed brickwork. His (or rather, Wei's) fingers somehow find handholds.

Wei starts to say, "Wait, you're not gonna-" and then boom, Jing is several feet up the wall already. He practically runs up it. Wei just lets him scramble up onto the roof. The building is a few storeys high, so Wei doesn't want to distract him, though it's pretty galling when someone else has better control of your body than you do. 

Jing hops onto the tiles and remains crouched, as there's not a lot of cover. He takes a moment to brush some lichen off his clothes.

"I just climbed a wall in, like, two seconds," says Wei. That's like the sort of shit Amon would do. "What the fuck."

"You know what?" Jing says, and flexes his fingers. "You actually have really good hands. And arms. And legs."

Wei would give him a sideways look, if he could. "Don't get too attached to them."

"Just paying you a compliment," Jing says, before skulking over to the other side of the roof. Wei becomes more aware of his surroundings. His heartbeat quickens. He flexes his fingers just to make himself stay present.

There's an alley directly below, although it's empty. Jing sits down on the roof.

"What now?" Wei says.

"We wait. Our target should pass beneath us shortly."

A breeze cuts across the rooftops. Wei pulls his (their) coat tighter around himself. The coat is prone to flapping in the wind, which probably looks kind of bad ass but isn't very practical. He's not dressed real sensible for a revenge mission. He could do with some goggles to stop his eyes watering from the cold.

Jing sets the suitcase down, opens it up, and begins to assemble the bow. And here's where things get weirder: as Jing handles the bow, it starts to look... Almost pretty. Not the slipshod thing Wei remembers seeing back in Kosen. The limbs bolt together until they make one sinuous arc, and the cams for the pulley system slide neatly onto their axles, and Jing pins them in place with tiny screws, and Wei catches himself thinking: _this guy is good at everything he does._ Everything. _What a fucking asshole. What a colossal prick._

While Wei's (Jing's) fingers make a final few adjustments to the weapon, Wei thinks about the weapon's purpose.

The weapon will be used to attack a bloodbender, using some sketchy-looking arrows loaded with tranq darts.

Wei hasn't had any say in this plan.

And now he's had time to reflect on everything, it occurs to him that the past day or day has gone really quickly. He woke up this morning in Kosen. He's now in Ruyi, to kill a man. He found out that he was possessed by a spirit before breakfast, and if he does what the spirit wants, he'll have murdered a guy, oh... By just around noon. (He'll assume that the bloodbender is meant to be Jing's lunch.)

Jing sits bolt upright, and looks down into the alley below. He takes his glasses from his pocket and puts them on, and blinks until Wei's eyes reluctantly adjust.

Below them, an old vagrant walks past. 

It's impossible to determine the man's ethnicity or age, though Wei guesses he's in his sixties. The vagrant is in ragged Earth Kingdom clothes, his head covered by a greasy-looking fur hat.

"Wow," says Jing, "That is a terrible hat."

Wei's hands grip the bow.

"Why are you looking at that guy?" Wei asks, although he probably knows the answer already.

"That's him," Jing says.

Wei stares at the sad figure below for a few seconds, then says, "Yeah, right."

"Um, what?" Jing says, a little confused. "It's him."

"That _can't_ be him," Wei says. Like things are ever this easy. Besides, even though the bloodbender is meant to be a master of disguise, Wei was still expecting him to look a bit more... suave.

"It's him."

Wei starts to get pissed off. "And what, I'm just meant to believe you? I can't even see his face."

"You can check his identity after you've shot him," Jing says. He licks his index finger and holds it up to the wind, then appears to make a few quick calculations using his hands.

Well, that makes sense. Shoot first, ask questions later. It's not like shooting a vagrant would be the worst thing Wei's ever done in his life.

Wei waits for Jing to stop counting on his fingers, then raises the bow so he can take a quick peek down the sight. He quickly positions the vagrant between the pins. He's never shot a bow before in his life, but he actually feels like he knows what he's doing. It's a muscle memory thing, though he's not sure _whose_ muscle memory it is.

The prospect of shooting some random civilian shouldn't bother him. If there's even the slightest chance that the guy is the bloodbender, then it should be worth it.

And yet...

Wei reaches out for one of the arrows, and tests the weight of it in his hand.

He lowers the bow so he can nock the arrow; there's, like, a little doodad that he can hook on the string so he doesn't have to pull it with his fingers. It's all so easy.

And something in him says: wait a fucking minute, am I really sniping at homeless guys from rooftops just because a voice in my head is telling me to? Something has gone extremely wrong somewhere.

Wei tries to raise the bow, but-

"...What?" says Jing.

"These arrows seem pretty heavy," Wei murmurs. "What if we shoot him and accidentally kill him outright?"

"At this range, that won't happen. They won't hit him hard enough. I did the math, and I adjusted the draw weight to make sure."

The vagrant wanders onwards.

"How do you know these tranq darts will even work?" Wei mutters. "What the fuck do you know about medicine?"

"The darts are loaded with diluted shirshu venom. It's one of the safest substances available!" Jing pauses. "...Speaking of shirshu, I think I smelled one in town earlier, but-"

"What if we shoot him in the head?"

"We _won't_ shoot him in the head." Jing now sounds incredulous, though this doesn't phase Wei any. Wei is quite used to hearing incredulity from people, although he usually hears it when they're asking questions. ( _'You did WHAT?' 'You drank HOW MUCH?' 'You got into a fight with WHO?'_ )

"What if he moves at the last second?" Wei asks.

"People don't die immediately because you've shot them in the head! They twitch and gurgle a lot first!"

"Yeah? What about if we accidentally shot him in the neck?"

"Look at a human neck! Look at how small it is compared to the rest of the body! It's tiny! It's amazing that you people manage to carry your own heads around!"

"I could still hit an artery."

Jing's voice is a mix of anger and disbelief. "I thought you WANTED to kill him."

"I do, but..." This seems too easy, too straightforward, and anything that seems straightforward is probably a lie. _Amon holds the solution. The United Forces can be defeated by means of superior technology. Once Republic City is liberated, other cities will rise up and follow our example. Your faith will see you through. You just need to be patient._

Perversely, Wei really wishes there was someone who could tell him what to think right now.

"If you take his mind," Wei says, "he'll suffer, right?"

"I could make him suffer," Jing says quickly. "I could make a moment of pain seem like forever. And I can let him know that you brought it upon him."

Wei itches to raise the bow and draw it.

Just shoot the bloodbender and it'll all be over.

'Just' is a word that can get you into a lot of trouble.

And then Wei thinks: _shit, I'm gullible._ It's the sort of thought that hurts like it's been delivered with a slap.

"Wei?" Jing prods.

And when, exactly, did Jing start referring to him as 'Wei'? He called him Lieutenant when they first met. Wei remembers that clearly.

Right, time to test a few things.

Wei tries to put the bow down on the ground.

He's stopped by a sudden tension in his arms, which doesn't surprise him, so he pushes against the resistance until his hands shake from pain. If Jing thinks he's unwilling to rupture a muscle, then he's dead wrong. Wei's done shit like pop his own dislocated arm back into its sockets before. Wei's not bothered by a bit of discomfort. Wei doesn't give a fuck. Wei's not going to take orders anymore. Especially not from some spirit. Wei would headbutt a dragon if it looked at him funny.

Just as Wei starts to feel nauseated by the pain, the tension abruptly vanishes. Wei is able to put the bow down.

Jing lets out a huge sigh, and it's as if a furnace door has been opened in Wei's mind; there's an immense wave of something like heat, and Jing's frustration _burns_ for a second before the door is slammed shut again. 

Wei still braces for some sort of backlash. Jing's words - _I could make a moment of pain seem like forever_ \- are going to stay with him for a very long time.

But Jing just says, "Fine. I don't understand you at all and I'm really mad! But fine!"

Wei looks down at the bow on the roof tiles, and rubs his hands together to stop them from trembling. He takes a moment to compose himself.

"You knocked me out, decided on this plan all by yourself, woke me up when it was convenient, then drip-fed me just enough info to get me to shoot a guy. There isn't a single thing about this situation that isn't fucked up." Wei says. "You can't just, uh, expect me to _do_ stuff while you got some weird agenda you're not telling me about. I've had enough of shit like that."

"I-" Jing starts, but then takes a deep breath and falls silent.

The vagrant is almost out of the alleyway by now.

Wei ignores the vagrant, and starts to disassemble the bow. He also ignores the little voice (and no, it's not Jing's, because in no way is Jing's voice 'little' by this point) that's telling him he's a complete idiot because he's just passed up a perfect opportunity to settle things. There's another voice, too, and it says that Jing is being extremely patient under the circumstances and that Wei now owes the spirit in a big way.

Jing takes a while to find the will to speak again. "So you just had an ideal chance to deal with the bloodbender and you're just going to... You're not..."

"I know you're stronger than me, but I'm not your puppet," Wei says, and removes Jing's glasses, "And I'm going get down from here, and then I'm going to find a wine shop, and then I'm going back to the hotel. Then I'm gonna think about things. And then we'll see."

Jing heaves another sigh, and stays quiet while Wei clumsily packs the bow back in the suitcase.

Wei then heads back to the other edge of the roof. He's midway through lowering himself onto a window ledge before Jing says, "Alright," and helps him down.

\--

Noatak pauses once he's out of the alleyway. He almost rubs the back of his neck, but hesitates when his fingers brush against bandages.

He can't sense anything unusual. The only living things within bloodbending range are a few rats hidden in a drain somewhere to his left.

He turns around and looks back at the alleyway itself. There are no shadows. The day is overcast. The sun is directly above. A slight breeze stirs a few dead leaves that have fallen onto the cobblestones. 

The alleyway runs between two brick walls that run parallel to each other. It has no corners, no stairs, no windows, no hiding places. Noatak can see straight down it. He can see the street at the other end. There's no one there.

He looks up at the rooftops. There's nothing unusual about them.

He pays close attention to his own heartbeat, willing it to slow down. He's fine. Fear seems a little pointless by now. He's not even sure what he's scared of losing.

It crosses his mind that someone, or something, wouldn't even need to hurt him to do him harm. All they'd need to do is observe. He's in poor health already. All they'd need was a moment of weakness on his part.

He walks back through the alleyway, though he's not sure what he's trying to prove by doing so. They likely _want_ him to know that they're watching him. They'd be satisfied by his unease.

He pauses, resting one hand against a wall, and he considers doing something that would force them to act, something that would demonstrate he's still a high-profile threat. But he remembers what he told Tarrlok: _I intend to live a very quiet life_. 

That was an absurd promise, all things considered. 

No wonder Tarrlok thought you were an idiot.

"Don't start," Noatak mutters. The acoustics of the alleyway make his words sound dead, but it doesn't matter what he says if there's no one around to hear him. The alleyway is empty. The alleyway is empty. The alleyway is empty. No one's watching.

His burns itch.

How long has it taken you to realize that you're beyond help?

Noatak sighs and leans against the alley wall. "Look, as I'm apparently stuck with you, and you seem to think that you're smarter than me, you could at least offer some constructive advice."

Kill yourself.

"That's... not constructive at all."

It's a permanent solution to every problem.

"I'm mortal. I'm going to die at some point anyway. Suicide is redundant."

Suicide would be a final act of self-determination.

"If I only did it because I thought I didn't have any other options, then it wouldn't really be an act of self-determination, you shitwit. In order to exercise self-determination, you need to make an actual _choice_."

You have choices. Prison or death.

"Those aren't choices. They're equivalent to each other. To have a choice, you need to be presented with two or more options that will result in different outcomes. And... I really have no idea why I'm talking to myself again."

Well, no one else will willingly speak to you at this point.

"True. I haven't washed or changed my clothes for well over a month. It's a wonder that my underwear isn't grafted to my skin."

You're completely bereft of dignity.

"Not quite. I'll be completely bereft of dignity when I'm finally forced to use a hammer and chisel to remove my pants. Give me another month or so."

Humor will not be an adequate coping mechanism.

"No, I'm a reprehensible human being who is doomed to spend the rest of his life in misery, I've made an enemy of everyone I've ever known, I deserve to die, I can't have nice things because I only spoil them, and so on and so on," Noatak says. "What do you want from me? Guilt? Because if you're right about me and I am some sort of amoral monster, then I'm probably incapable of genuine remorse anyway." It occurs to him that he sounds a little like Tarrlok. He wonders if he _might_ be a little like Tarrlok. He definitely shares Tarrlok's knack for self-sabotage, at least.

Glibness has never protected you.

"Whenever I was on stage, I always had a terrible desire to start singing show tunes, just to see the audience's reaction," Noatak says, then rubs his face and smiles. "You can judge me all you want, but... Shit, you're a joyless windbag." And he's gone back to using second-person pronouns again. He's not sure if that makes things better or worse, but it definitely makes things easier. "And you've got no right to judge anyone, not really. You were simple and inhuman. You were a string of appealing clichés. After I was done with you, I was going to..."

_Kill you off._

Noatak blinks a few times, and rubs his eyes to make them focus.

Faking your own death won't give you what you want. Even if you succeeded, you'd just be delaying the inevitable.

"Delaying the inevitable sounds good to me," Noatak says.

It won't give you what you want, because you don't know what you want.

"I want to be left alone."

You know that's not possible.

"Well, I'll have to prove you wrong then, won't I?" Noatak says, and straightens his shoulders, and heads back out to the street.


	8. Summer, ASC 171

_Summer, ASC 171_

 

Tarrlok is just glad when their journey takes them further into land, away from the sea. They cross marshes and paddy fields until the ground hardens beneath the sun, and the surrounding vegetation becomes sharp and ungenerous, as if it's driven to survive out of spite.

Whenever they stop to get their bearings, Korra hops down off the polar bear dog, takes a waterskin from one of the panniers, and hurls the water skin at Tarrlok's head. She never just passes the water skin to him. She always throws it, sometimes without even looking in his direction. Then she consults the wealth of maps that she's brought along, never bothering to ask for _his_ advice, and Tarrlok pretends that he isn't impressed by her ability to use a compass. 

At night, she makes a habit of pointing out constellations and telling him their names. In return, he names the political leaders of the areas they pass through, and he tells her about their personalities and their interests and their connections and their families, though he's never sure whether she's actually listening.

\--

"People must be worried about you right now, what with you running off on your own," Tarrlok says one early evening, while Naga slowly lollops across grassland. "Don't you feel bad about that?"

Korra doesn't turn to look at him as she speaks. "They should trust me to take care of myself."

Tarrlok looks out across the plains. They look like something out of a painting, albeit a painting created by someone with only a basic grasp of watercolors, so the bottom half of the picture is grey-green while the top half is the color of a bruise, and there's not a lot of detail in between. 

"Is that what you're going to tell your friends and family when you see them again? If they get upset, you'll accuse them of having insufficient faith in you?" Tarrlok asks.

Korra's posture stiffens, and she says, "You're doing that thing where you're trying to make me look like I'm some kind of..." She searches for the right word. "...Asshole. You're trying to make me look like I'm an asshole. Again."

"Well, running off is an asshole thing to do, Korra," says Tarrlok. She should stop swearing. It bothers him.

" _I told you_ , I left them a letter," Korra grumbles.

"And what did it say, exactly? 'Dear so-and-so, I've gone to hunt down a man who's might've spent most of his life planning to kill me, but don't worry, I'll be travelling in the company of a bloodbending lunatic, so I'm sure that absolutely nothing will go wrong. See you in a few months.'"

"You're not a bloodbender anymore," Korra points out. "You're just a regular lunatic."

"And yet I'm still the only person on this polar bear dog who has any common sense."

"You're not gonna _be_ on this polar bear dog for much longer if you keep trying to pick fights with me, bub."

"What, you'd make me walk to Shunjing from here? Very well. That suits me. We're in the middle of nowhere right now. Perhaps if I'm lucky, I'll be eaten by wolves."

"No wolf in the world would be that hungry."

"Korra, by this point, I might just roll myself in myself in char siu seasoning and set myself on fire."

"You'd still taste like burned beard dirt."

"You have no respect for your elders."

"You don't act like my elder."

"Well, even if I did, I doubt you'd listen to me. If you're willing to disobey the orders of a Grand Lotus, then what hope do I have?"

Korra doesn't reply.

"By the way, isn't Katara like a grandmother to you?" Tarrlok adds.

Korra remains silent for a few seconds, then says, "Nice try, but I'm still going to find Amon."

"I'm sure Katara won't be angry. Just very disappointed."

"You get some weird kick out of trying to piss me off, right?" Korra mutters.

"If you don't enjoy my company, then you shouldn't have kidnapped me."

"I-" Korra begins, then pauses.

"Ha _ha_ ," says Tarrlok, "You underestimated how awful I am, didn't you?"

"No, you're just awful in a different way to what I expected," Korra snaps.

"And what were you expecting?"

" _Someone smarter._ "

Tarrlok sits back a little in the saddle, leaning away from her.

Then he considers a few things, and says, "Actually, I used to think I'd be smarter, as well."

Korra lets out a loud sigh, and spends a few seconds in contemplative silence before telling him, "You can be kind of a putz sometimes."

"Only sometimes?"

"Yeah. You're not a total jerk. Just kind of a putz."

Tarrlok wonders if that argument would stand up in court. _Well this man tried to kidnap the Avatar and he violently assaulted a group of people, but he's also a complete boob, so he can't be_ that _bad, right?_ He almost laughs. Perhaps he should outright tell the Avatar, 'You know when I had your friends arrested? That was a deliberate act of spite on my part. I did that because I knew it would scare you. That's what evil is: knowing that something is wrong, and doing it anyway because it's convenient.'

"So you're saying I'm not malicious, I'm just stupid?" Tarrlok asks.

"Kinda."

Tarrlok nods slowly. "...I think I'd feel better if you said I was malicious." 

"No you wouldn't," Korra says, with no small amount of menace.

"Though really," Tarrlok continues, "it's not like being malicious and being a putz are mutually exclusive. You could argue that being a putz is a prerequisite for malice."

"You're saying only stupid people do bad things?" replies Korra.

"Something like that. Maybe 'stupid' is the wrong word, but malicious behavior reflects a... A failure, somewhere. Either a failure of self-control, or a failure of imagination."

"That's kinda what I was getting at when I said you were a putz. It was pretty dumb of you to pick a fight with me. If you'd lost, I would've kicked your ass, and if you'd won, then-" Korra thinks about it. "Well, technically, you _did_ win, and here we are."

Tarrlok winces, as Korra can't see him do it.

"Tenzin told me once that every bad deed contains the seed of its own unmaking," Korra says.

"That's nice," says Tarrlok.

"Hey, you know what you said about, like... Malice being a failure of imagination or whatever?" says Korra, as if she's been struck by an idea. "You should talk to Tenzin about that stuff sometime."

"I'd rather throw myself off a cliff," Tarrlok mutters.

\--

Tarrlok doesn't realize how close they are to their destination until a few days later, when they climb a hill and notice the bleached white buildings huddled together at the bottom of the valley. The setting sun bathes the town in an orange glow.

Korra consults her map, then takes some binoculars from the pannier and takes a good look around. When she seems satisfied with her surroundings, she nods to herself, and flops against Naga. "Yeah, I think we're at the right place. That town down there looks like Shunjing," she says. "We made it. Go us."

Tarrlok isn't sure whether she's talking to him or to the polar bear dog, but he asks, "What now?"

Korra takes great care in rolling the map back up. "I figure I'll go into town in disguise so I can get a lead on Noatak and Katara both. You can stay here with Naga."

Tarrlok looks at Naga.

Naga looks back at Tarrlok as if to say 'you're no prize pig either'.

"Is... That your plan?" Tarrlok asks Korra. "You're going to go to Shunjing and just... nosey around?"

"Yeah."

"Is there any more to this plan?"

Korra now glances up. "What, you want me to tell you exactly what I intend to do, and then you can say how dumb I am and that it's not going to work?"

Yes. "I just..." says Tarrlok, "I'm skeptical of any plan that can be described in one sentence."

"You have a better idea?"

"You could take me back to the White Lotus, like a law-abiding citizen."

"Tarrlok, _I need to find Amon_."

"Yes. But. You can't just walk into some town. People will recognize you. And if Katara's in Shunjing, then the place will probably be crawling with White Lotus spies."

"Uh, that's why I said I'd go in disguise?"

Avatar Korra, girl of a thousand faces. "And you think that'll work?" Tarrlok asks.

Korra stares at him like he's an opponent in a pro-bending ring. "I'll make a fake beard out of Naga's fur. No one will ever know."

Tarrlok stares back.

"I'm kidding," Korra says, before he can speak again. "Anyway, it can wait until tomorrow. I want a rest."

"I'm saying nothing," says Tarrlok, then manages to go a whole three seconds before adding, "I hope your idea of a disguise doesn't just involve wearing a large hat."

Korra marches off to some spindly trees at the bottom of the hill. "No. I'm going to wear a large hat AND a scarf."

"I can't even tell when you're joking anymore," Tarrlok laments, following after her.

\--

They set up camp in the cluster of trees. Tarrlok briefly entertains the idea of sneaking off and trying to find Katara while Korra is asleep, but decides against it on the basis that it could potentially make things worse.

Korra watches as Tarrlok straightens out his bedroll, and then she announces, "You're not stupid."

"Excuse me?" says Tarrlok.

"I'm just saying, you're not stupid."

Tarrlok has absolutely no idea what's prompted this. He almost replies with something like, 'that's very charitable of you to say so', but instead says, "Uh. Thank you?"

Then Korra goes and ruins things by peering at him like he's a really sad zoo exhibit, yet again. 

"If you're hoping that I'll say, 'well Korra, you're not stupid, either'," then you're sadly waiting in vain," Tarrlok says.

Korra rolls her eyes at him, turns away, and sits down on the ground.

Tarrlok flicks a spider off his bedroll before settling down for the night.

He listens to the creak of dry branches moving in the wind as he falls asleep.

\--

Tarrlok's eyes open. The tangle of branches above him look like capillaries. His skin crawls. He has no idea what time it is, but there's barely enough light to see by, and the full moon is veiled by clouds (and it's so strange, that he has to _look_ at the moon to know what phase it's in).

He sits up. Korra is already on her feet, hunched by Naga, who isn't growling, not just yet. They both stare into the darkness beyond the trees.

Tarrlok should just be angry about being woken up.

"Korra, wha-" he begins, and a shadow drops behind Korra's back.

Humans don't move that quickly.

There's a thud and a blur of movement, and Korra is shoved forwards, gasping as her breath is knocked out of her. She topples forwards and hits the ground face-first.

Tarrlok stumbles to his feet, too slow, always too slow. Naga snarls and twists to snap at the shadow, but it darts away from her jaws and leaps up into the nearest tree, invisible within the branches, and Tarrlok just runs to Korra and crouches by her side. 

Korra's eyes are closed. He can't tell if she's breathing. Through the fog of panic, two distinct thoughts cross his mind: 

'Oh shit, please be alright, I can't afford to lose you as well.' 

and 

'You know, it'd be very easy for someone to frame me for the murder of the Avatar right now.'

Somewhere to his left, Naga yelps.

Tarrlok scoops Korra up. She's much heavier than he remembers, and he doesn't know if he can run all the way to Shunjing while carrying her, and it'd be too easy to get lost. He crouches, cradling her, and checks her boots to see if she has a knife, but of course she hasn't, she'd have no need for one, and ha, it's still a bit of a novel concept, to think that some people actually need to _carry_ weapons, and really, what exactly is Tarrlok meant to do in this situation? Hit his attacker with a rock? He can't even see any good rocks nearby-

And then the shadow is right in front of him, its head tilted curiously. The shadow is small. Childlike. 

Out the corner of his eye, Tarrlok can see Naga lying on the ground.

Tarrlok hunches over Korra, for all the good that'll do, and braces himself. He's not going to win this fight. All he can do is try to learn as much about his attacker as possible, and hope that he'll survive long enough for this information to be useful.

The shadow suddenly lunges, and Tarrlok's right hand moves by itself as if trying to draw a shield with water that isn't there.

The shadow flicks Tarrlok hard on the ear.

"OW," he says, more out of surprise than anything else.

By the time he's got his wits together, the shadow has already stepped back out of his reach. 

"You're definitely not going to bloodbend me, are you?" it asks, and Tarrlok struggles to comprehend its voice.

He's not quite sure what he was expecting, but it wasn't this.

"N-no," he answers. 

"Oh phew, good, I'm told it really hurts," the shadow says, then pulls a black scarf away from its face. In the gloom, Tarrlok can make out a pair of beady little eyes that put him in mind of some woodland creature.

The shadow is actually a little old lady in a black suit.

The shadow turns away, and yells into the darkness, "Hey Katara! He says he's not going to bloodbend me! Isn't that nice?"

Tarrlok briefly considers grabbing the Avatar again and trying to run, though perhaps it'd be wiser to climb a tree, or play dead. He tries, he really tries, to come up with a credible explanation for why he left the White Lotus compound, and he can't think of anything better than, 'the Avatar hit me and she's stronger than I am'.

Korra groans quietly.

A second shadow emerges from between the trees and approaches until its silhouette resolves into the shape of another old lady: one with a cane and a curved spine. Katara pauses for a moment, and uses a cigarette lighter to ignite the lantern that she's carrying, which just allows Tarrlok to see how angry she looks.

"Good evening, Tarrlok," Katara says, inching closer with terrible inevitability. "Put the Avatar down, please."

Tarrlok breathes in through his teeth, gently lowers Korra to the ground, and takes a large step away from her.

Katara holds the lantern up and regards him through narrowed eyes. "You have two seconds to give me a good reason why I shouldn't hit you in the leg with my stick."

"Well, I-... To be quite honest, I'd just like to apologize for the fact that-... _Ow_." The cane cracks against his shin.

Katara looks at him like he's lower than dirt (which shouldn't bother him, given that he used to be a politician), then stares down at Korra, who lets out another groan and slowly sits upright. 

Korra lifts her right arm and tries to touch her face, but her hand hangs slack as if something is wrong with her wrist.

Katara's... friend, personal assassin, fellow evil grandma, whatever she is... crouches next to Korra and tuts in sympathy. "It's okay if you feel like you've got noodle arms, honey. It wears off." 

Korra immediately looks around for her polar bear dog, then asks, panicked, "What's wrong with Naga?"

"Naga's fine," Katara says. "Worry about your own problems. You've insulted me. You've disobeyed my orders. You've betrayed my trust, and you've underestimated my intelligence."

Korra blinks, then seems to realize what's happening. She looks a little like how Tarrlok feels. Her mouth hangs open for a moment, and then she manages to say, "Oh... I, uh. I'm. Sorry."

"Do you have any idea how much danger you've put yourself in?" Katara says, quietly. "Do you know how easy it was for me to track you? Or how easy it was for a seasoned chi blocker to spring an ambush? I thought you'd been raised better than this."

Korra gets that expression on her face - Tarrlok is quite familiar with it by now - like she's fighting back the urge to argue.

Tarrlok silently prays he'll keep her mouth shut.

Katara then jabs her cane at him. "And you. If I thought you were competent, I'd blame all of this on you. Korra's a teenager, but what's your excuse?"

"Uh, actually, I made him come with me," Korra mutters. She stands up, wobbles a bit, then steadies herself.

Katara's voice remains quiet, but now there's a note of exasperation to it. "Stop defending him."

"Don't yell at him because you're mad at me!" Korra says, just a little too loudly for someone who's addressing a Grand Lotus. 

Katara eyes her. "Excuse me?"

"Everything was my idea because this whole mess is my responsibility and I thought that taking responsibility was meant to be a _good_ thing, and you can't put me on the sidelines just because I lost one fight and now you don't think I'm capable of dealing with Amon. If you don't think I'm capable of dealing with him, then you're meant to teach me to deal with him! And you can't say, like, 'oh, Korra's a teenager' like that makes me some kind of idiot, because that's not fair. I'm not stupid. I just lost my bending _once_. I got it back. You said I betrayed your trust, but you don't trust ME," Korra says, then has to take a very deep breath.

"Korra." Katara makes the name sound like a warning.

"Don't 'Korra' me like I'm six years old! Amon was my problem from the start, and now you want to take things out my hands because you suddenly think you're the only one who's qualified to deal with this stuff. And yeah, it might've been risky for me to run off and try to find Amon by myself, but if you'd just let me go with you in the first place then WE WOULDN'T BE HAVING THIS ARGUMENT." 

The temperature drops sharply.

Katara says nothing. 

Korra purses her lips together, and glances away. Her gaze settles on Tarrlok for a second, just long enough for her to give him a look that he interprets as, 'Please be kind towards my next incarnation.' 

Katara still says nothing. Tarrlok avoids looking directly at her.

Then little lady in the black suit claps her hands together, and says, "You know what we need?! Dim sum and tea!"

"Ty Lee," Katara says, very slowly. "It's around midnight. You can't-"

"Dim sum and tea," the old lady repeats in a cheerful hiss, teeth gritted together.

Katara's demeanour changes slightly. One might say that she thaws a little. "Fine," she intones, "We'll discuss this matter back at the house."

The old lady - Ty Lee, apparently - offers an vapid smile, and wanders over to where Naga lies. She runs her hands over the scruff of the creature's neck, pauses, then jabs an index finger into its fur. Naga's back legs kick, and then the creature raises its head and sneezes.

"I've restarted your doggy," Ty Lee tells Korra, dusting off her hands.

Korra nods absently, and pats Naga on the neck.

\--

Ty Lee's house in Shunjing is a sprawling building set just a short distance from the town. There's a lone guard outside the main gate, leaning against the wall. Ty Lee wakes the guard by flicking her ear.

The place is quiet. Ty Lee leads the three of them past manicured lawns, into a reception area past a deceptively sensible-looking front door.

And even at night with only a few lanterns burning, it's clear that interior of the house is alarmingly pink. Tiny ceramic statues of children and animals dominate every surface. There are far too many tapestries, too many wall scrolls, too many pictures of pastel-colored bunnies, fenghuangs, and demure ladies in billowy dresses. Tarrlok isn't surprised to find that the entire place smells like old lady perfume. If it didn't smell like old lady perfume, something would be amiss.

Ty Lee leads them to a room that contains a table and entirely too many silk cushions, then potters around, making tea. She hums a song from a sentimental opera to herself (Tarrlok pretends he doesn't recognize the tune). Korra and Katara kneel at the table and avoid looking at each other, while Tarrlok examines the split ends in his hair. 

Korra's polar bear dog squeezes itself into a corner and radiates haughty indignation.

Tarrlok racks his brain, trying to figure out if he should know, or care, who Ty Lee is. Is she a member of the White Lotus? Or does Katara just have ties to a secret cabal of shadowy grandmothers? Tarrlok might be intrigued by this if he wasn't so tired, but under the current circumstances, he's more interested in the prospect of a warm drink and a night's sleep under a proper roof.

They sit in silence for a while, and then Korra props both her elbows on the table so she can rest her chin on her hands, and takes a deep breath. "Sorry," she tells Katara. "I shouldn't have gone off on my own after you told me to go back to the city. That was... uh. That was rude."

Katara sniffs. "Well, maybe I shouldn't expect the Avatar to obey orders. It's important that you use your own discretion. I just wish you'd been more prudent and that you'd... communicated a little more instead of suddenly disappearing."

"Sorry," Korra repeats.

"You're forgiven," Katara says. "I could stay angry at you, but it wouldn't solve much."

"I'm really, really sorry," Korra mutters.

"Yet you'd do exactly the same thing all over again, if you thought it was the right course of action," Katara says. "Don't fret over it. We just need to work on your situational awareness so it won't be so easy for people to ambush you in future."

"So what now?" Korra asks, giving Tarrlok a shifty glance.

Katara drums her fingers against the tabletop. "Well, I could send you back to the United Republic. However, I'm not sure what you'd actually learn if I did that. And, since you're here, it might be more productive if you were taught some proper chi blocking."

Korra sits upright. (And Tarrlok doesn't know if he feels relieved for her, or incredulous. Surely they're not going to let her off the hook that easily. They can't just let her do whatever she wants because she's the Avatar, right? No wonder she's such a brat.)

"Does that mean she'll be staying here for a while?" Ty Lee pipes up from an adjacent room.

"What?" Katara yells back.

"I said, does that mean she'll be staying here for a while?!"

"Come in here when you speak to me so I can see your face!" Katara shouts.

Ty Lee comes back into the room with a tray of cakes and tea cups, which she sets down on the table. "I. Said. Does. That. Mean. She'll. Be. Staying. Here. For. A. While?"

Katara bristles. "Yes. If. You. Don't. Mind. Having. Her." Then she clears her throat and softens her tone. "Would that be alright?"

"Of course! I'd love to train the Avatar!" Ty Lee clasps her hands together under her chin. "There's a spare bed in the dormitory and I'm sure my students will be so excited to meet her!! I'll tell everyone at breakfast tomorrow!"

"Um, thanks," Korra says, with a tentative smile. 

"I sure you'll be a really good chi blocker!" Ty Lee serves the tea, then plops down on a cushion at the table and grins. Most of her front teeth are missing.

Korra glances over to Katara, then Tarrlok. "What about him?"

Katara and Ty Lee both try to speak at the same time.

"He's going-"

"He can stay-"

They pause and look at each other.

"I'll think on it," Katara says.

Tarrlok eyes Korra, who takes a deep breath as if she has something to say. 

Katara cuts her off. "For the time being, he'll be sleeping in the same room as me," she says.

Ty Lee gives Katara a peculiar glance and raises her eyebrows, but Katara just glares back, which leaves Ty Lee looking disappointed.

Tarrlok refrains from putting his head in his hands, and drinks his tea.

\--

After the tea has been cleared away and Korra has eaten most of the cakes, Ty Lee leads them to the guest quarters. Katara has already been given a large room on the north side of the house. 

Katara's room is also very pink. Tarrlok experiences a powerful urge to redecorate it.

It looks like Katara has been staying in the room for the past few days, as it already contains a few Katara-like things, such a waterskin, a sewing bag, a few map cases, and a luggage case on little wheels, all neatly arranged. Katara sits down on the floor under a lantern, takes some sort of sewing project out of the bag, and busies herself with needlework.

There are two beds, so Tarrlok takes the one that's furthest away from Katara. He rolls over so he has his back to her, and then he stares at the wall and tries to avoid dwelling on the many ways in which everything is terrible. He wills himself not to snore. Or fart. Or make any sort of noise that you wouldn't wish to make in the presence of a Grand Lotus, really.

Fortunately, he only has to feign sleep for a few minutes.

\--

 

When Tarrlok wakes, there's sunlight streaming through the windows, and Katara is absent. He ventures out of the bedroom and lumbers around until he finds the outhouse.

Once that's been dealt with, he decides to go back indoors and return to the guest bedroom so no one can accuse him of sneaking around. However, en route, he hears voices coming from the courtyard, and he stops to listen.

One of the voices belongs to Korra, though he can't tell what she's saying. 

Tarrlok looks down at himself. He's still wearing the clothes that he slept in, and it's been so long since he last washed that he no longer feels uncomfortable, just resigned to his own filth. He makes a token effort to pull the creases out of his shirt. Not that it's actually his shirt. The shirt is probably Tenzin's (whose clothes, it turns out, are a little on the large side). Tarrlok wouldn't wear a shirt like this unless his life had gone horribly wrong somewhere.

He soon gives up on trying to look presentable, and heads towards the courtyard.

Katara is sitting on a bench by the south wall. A short distance away, Korra and Ty Lee seem to be conducting some sort of sparring exercise, although it looks like a very slow, drawn-out slapfight where they bump their forearms together. Ty Lee seems quite different now that she's not dressed like an assassin: she's wearing a carnation-colored suit that was probably designed for someone forty years younger, and her braided hair is dyed a shade of reddish-purple that doesn't exist in nature. Tarrlok would say that she looks like an ageing flower spirit, but that would almost sound flattering.

Tarrlok discreetly takes a seat next to Katara.

Katara doesn't look at him, but immediately starts to speak: "You know, when Korra was small, she found a cheap little doll in one of the dormitories, and she insisted that it was hers. Then one day she threw the doll at some sled dogs, and one of the dogs managed to eat its head. She threw such a tantrum that Acolyte Priya had to rush in to rescue both the doll and the dogs. So then Korra had this headless doll that smelled of dog breath, and nothing we said could make her let go of the wretched thing. She said she felt sorry for it. All we could do was ban her from bringing it to the dinner table."

Good morning to you too, Tarrlok thinks, then mulls over what she's just said. 

"You're going to say I remind you of the doll, I take it?" he asks.

Katara now turns to look at him, and just raises her eyebrows.

Tarrlok twiddles his thumbs. "You don't like me very much, do you?"

"I almost liked you, right until you escaped from White Lotus custody."

Tarrlok wants to point at Korra and say 'it was her idea', but instead replies, "Ye-es, I'll admit that I don't really have an excuse for that."

Katara resumes watching Korra.

"Well, for what it's worth, you can always just stick a few more years on my sentence," Tarrlok mutters. 

"You sound a little too blase about your future, Tarrlok."

"I could keep apologizing, but I've always believed that the value of an apology is inversely proportional to the number of times you have to repeat it," Tarrlok says. "I, ah... Still don't know what you want from me. Sorry."

Katara purses her lips into a wrinkly little line.

Tarrlok looks down at his hands, and picks at the calluses on his left palm.

There's the tap-tap-tap of Katara drumming her fingernails against the handle of her cane.

Eventually, she says, "Do you want to know what I told Korra about you?"

"I don't know," Tarrlok replies. "How bad was it?"

"I told her, 'You know what, since you were able to break him out of the compound and drag him all the way over here... I think I'll keep him in my custody. At least that way, I'll know where he is at all times.'"

Tarrlok looks over at her.

"I will be having words with a few people about White Lotus security measures," Katara grumbles.

"So, does that mean I-" Tarrlok begins.

"You'll be following me around for the foreseeable future," Katara says, with grim resignation. "I don't trust you enough to leave you on your own. And, who knows, I might need someone to open jars and get things off high shelves."

Tarrlok almost asks, 'is this going to be better or worse than prison?' but keeps his mouth shut.

Katara narrows her eyes at him. "By the way, if I have to keep looking at you, then you need to do something about your hair. You remind me of Chong the Nomad."

"Who?"

"Before your time. Just do something about your hair."

Tarrlok squints right back at her. "Such as?"

"Just tie it back and put some oil on it or... actually brush it at the very least, just so I don't feel like I'm talking to a very depressed qalupalik," Katara says.

"It's good to see that you've found someone new to order around," says a loud voice to Katara's right. 

Tarrlok looks up. There's another old woman - not Ty Lee - sitting on the bench next to the Grand Lotus. The newcomer is spindly and bespectacled, with a grey scarf over her hair. There's nothing too noteworthy about her - she just looks like she's the sort of old bag who'd own far too many owl cats, because owl cats might be the only creatures who hate the world almost as much as she does. 

Tarrlok didn't see her sit down.

Tarrlok is developing a particular distrust of little old ladies.

Katara just glances over at the other woman and lifts her nose in the air.

The newcomer points in Korra's direction. "That's the Avatar? Really? Goodness me."

"She'll be staying here for a while," Katara says, primly.

"What an honor," the old woman mutters, then leans forwards so she can study Tarrlok. She has bright yellow eyes. She reminds him of a reptile. (You could probably make several pairs of shoes out of her; she looks leathery enough.) 

"This one isn't one of yours, is it?" the old woman asks. "How many children did you have, again? Ten? Didn't you try to single-handedly repopulate the entire Southern Water Tribe?"

Katara opens her mouth as if she's about to say something unpleasant.

The old woman cuts her off, "No, I think I know who he is. I do read your city's newspapers out of morbid curiosity." Then she addresses Tarrlok: "So _you_ were the head of the council? That explains quite a lot."

"You can ignore her," Katara says. "Eventually she'll get bored and go away." 

"I am a guest in this household," the old woman says, squaring her shoulders. "And I'm genuinely surprised to find you here. I thought you were meant to be back at the South Pole, doing White Lotus things like preserving harmony between the four nations and maintaining peace and whatnot. Since you're doing such a good job with that."

Katara sniffs. "Well, while I usually have my hands full with my important duties, my many talented students, and my wonderful family... I've decided that I could use a vacation." 

The old woman shakes her head. "Trying to catch some minor charlatan, I gather. What's the point? Give it two years, and everyone will have forgot he existed."

"Perhaps. He could probably get away with changing his name, keeping a low profile, and living the rest of his life in obscurity." Katara stares at the other woman. "...However, I don't like leaving loose ends. And I have a very long memory."

"I could probably track down your filthy Water Tribe bandit in two weeks," the old lady says, blandly.

"Do you really want to turn this into a competition?" Katara asks.

The old lady blinks. "Wait, you don't want me to catch him? But wouldn't that benefit the greater good? Surely you're not just pursuing this man purely for the sake of your own ego, perhaps as a desperate attempt to prove that you're still relevant?"

Katara stares at her for a moment, then laughs. "Shush, Cahaya. I have a right to find him. He attacked people I love."

The old lady - Cahaya - makes a face as if she's sucking a lemon. "Suit yourself." She then leans back and points a tapered fingernail in Korra's direction. "On a different note, if I attempt to speak with the Avatar, will you embarrass yourself by making a fuss about it?"

"Why do you want to talk to her?"

"Because I can. Also she's much more attractive than the last one," Cahaya says, then mutters something that sounds like, 'bearded baby on stilts'.

"If you want to make a fool of yourself, then don't let me stop you," Katara mutters.

Cahaya hops up from the bench and paces over to where Korra and Ty Lee are training. She moves at an uncanny speed. Watching her move across the lawn is a bit like watching a harmless log reveal itself to be a crocodile.

Korra and Ty Lee stop what they're doing., and Korra and Cahaya speak with each other, and then Cahaya says something that makes Korra laugh and take a small step back. 

"You know, it took her at least thirty years to figure out how jokes work," Katara mutters to Tarrlok.

"You've known her a long time?" Tarrlok asks.

"Unfortunately."

"Who is she?"

"A minor annoyance."

Tarrlok smiles thinly. "Could she find Noatak in two weeks?"

Now Katara looks like _she's_ just sucked a lemon. "I'm sure she'd like you to think so."

Tarrlok watches as the old woman stalks off back towards the house, leaving Korra and Ty Lee to their weird arm-bumping exercise.

\--

Later on, when Katara has gone away to do something that's presumably important and therefore none of Tarrlok's business (she tells him to stay within Ty Lee's household, nothing else), Tarrlok is able to catch Korra alone again. 

He furtively asks Korra to find him a pair of clippers and a mirror. She gives him an odd look, but doesn't comment, and soon returns with the requested items. Tarrlok then returns to the privacy of the guest room, sits down, grits his teeth, and tries to cut his hair short again. 

The end result still looks awful, but it looks awful in a completely different way to how it was before, so that's progress. By Earth Kingdom standards (for what those are worth), his appearance might even be considered acceptable.

"I've fucked up my hair and I have ruined my life," he says to himself, out loud, then spends a good ten minutes just staring at a wall because he's not sure if he wants to start smashing things, or worse, cry. (It figures, doesn't it, that after everything that's happened, the thing that finally breaks him is a bad haircut.) Why the hell did Noatak let him cut his hair short in the first place? This is all his fault.

He reminds himself that he's an adult, and wanders back outside.

\--

Tarrlok returns to the courtyard. 

Korra is easy to locate: she's sitting on the grass with a girl in a pink uniform, presumably one of Ty Lee's students. The two of them are conversing over a huge plate of pastel-colored pastries, so Tarrlok stays out of sight and waits a while, pretending to mind his own business. He's quite aware that this probably looks tremendously creepy on his part, but there isn't much else for him to do.

He leans against a wall, and notes his sense of dread at the prospect of boredom.

When he was staying at the temple, he'd always found a way to pass the time. The place contained a surprising number of books (consequently, Tarrlok now knows far too much about goat sheep farming, acupuncture, medicinal herbs, and minor agricultural spirits), and when his health had improved and he'd been willing to move around and hold actual conversations, he'd ran errands and helped with basic chores. It had almost been pleasant. (Though there was one episode where he'd thrown a mop a good ten feet in anger after realizing that cleaning was much harder when you couldn't waterbend, and the temple's head healer had just given him this _look_ and said, "Sweetie, is there anything you want to talk about?") He'd been able to keep himself from feeling entirely useless. 

Here, though...

He's relieved when the girl in the pink uniform finally leaves, and Korra is alone again, still eating the pastries. Tarrlok walks towards her.

Korra waves him over, then peers up at him when he's a few paces away. Right. She's noticed the hair.

"You kind of look like a normal person," she says.

Tarrlok stares down at her and asks, "Why are you so awful?"

Korra pauses for a very long time, then says, "Look, just... Sit down with me and have a tart, alright?"

"A what?"

"A tart."

"What flavor are they?"

"I don't know. Purple?"

"Purple is not a flavor."

Korra shrugs at him. "I think they're made from taro, maybe."

Tarrlok regards the tarts suspiciously, but still sits next to her.

Korra dusts some pastry crumbs off her hands. "Hey. I was gonna say to you: you should do some chi blocking training with me. I don't think Ty Lee would teach you, given that you're a guy and she doesn't usually teach guys - though Ty Lee wants a word with you, by the way, she told me to tell you that - but I could show you how to do some stuff."

Tarrlok wants to recoil from the word 'should'. "Why?" he replies.

"It'd be fun?"

"I'd embarrass myself, and I've embarrassed myself enough for one lifetime already, thank you."

"I bet you'd be good at it."

"What, embarrassing myself?"

"Uh, no. I mean you'd be good at chi blocking.

"Do you think I'd be good at chi blocking because my brother is good at chi blocking?"

"Yeah," Korra replies, then draws a sharp breath. "Wait, I mean, no. But you were good at fighting before."

"Why are you encouraging a known criminal to learn how to fight?" Tarrlok asks, and half expects her to answer with 'so you have a sporting chance if I try to set you on fire again'.

"It's exercise."

"If I wanted exercise, I'd go running," Tarrlok says. Running is also another thing that Noatak is good at, incidentally. Actually, maybe he shouldn't have said that.

Korra fixes him with a stare. "Tarrlok, if you don't learn some chi blocking with me, then I'm just going to think you're a wuss."

Tarrlok has an odd flashback to when he was much younger, and an earthbender had called him a pansy, and Tarrlok had knocked out two of the guy's front teeth. In retrospect, the earthbender had probably been lucky to walk away with both of his kneecaps intact. "Maybe there are worse things to be than a wuss."

Korra looks at him as if that definitely wasn't the reply she was expecting. "Okay, fine, don't learn chi blocking with me."

"I won't."

"Suit yourself, bub."

"I will."

"Good." Korra crams a pastry in her mouth, and says, "If someone attacks you, I'm not going to save you."

Tarrlok could take the bait and insist that he wouldn't need saving, but that might be a little too sad and delusional, even for him. So he says, "Fine. Maybe I'll die, and then you'll have that on your conscience forever. Then as you lie in bed at night, haunted by your darkest insecurities, you'll think, 'oh no, I should've saved Tarrlok. Poor helpless, self-destructive, tragically doomed Tarrlok, who was completely defenseless and miserable after losing his bending.'"

Tarrlok almost expects Korra to tell him to grow up, but she remains quiet. She stops chewing the pastry for a few seconds, then swallows hard.

"Wait," says Tarrlok, "When I went missing with Noatak, did you actually think I was dead?"

Korra gives him a wretched sort of sideways look. "Kind of?" She pauses. "Are you sure you don't want your bending back?"

"I'm not sure about anything. Although bending _did_ make my life difficult in some respects, so perhaps I shouldn't miss it."

Korra gives him a very long look as she reaches for another pastry.

"What?" Tarrlok says.

"What?" Korra echoes.

"You keep peering at me like I'm some sort of, I don't know, some sort of scientific curiosity."

"I'm not-" Korra begins, then winces at herself. "Okay. I'll be honest. You might get really mad and freak out on me and maybe start screaming when I tell you this, but... I keep wondering if Noatak is anything like you."

Tarrlok takes a moment to decide if this statement offends him. 

"...Why would I start screaming at you about that?" Tarrlok asks.

Korra leans back from him very slightly. "Uh, do you not remember what happened when I last said you were just like Amon?"

"Oh," says Tarrlok, very slowly, "Did I scream at you then?"

"I can't remember, I think I was more focused on, uh, not getting stabbed in the head by an ice knife."

Tarrlok's heart sinks. "I'm really, really sorry about that, and I-"

"You've apologized already. I shouldn't have mentioned it, please just forget I said anything, I'm making this worse." Korra screws her eyes shut. "I mean I wonder if Noatak is anything like you in _good_ ways, like... I don't know, but I don't think I want to kill him, because I'm so glad I didn't kill you."

Tarrlok doesn't know how to respond to that, so what comes out of his mouth is: "Well, in all fairness, if you'd killed me, you probably would've been arrested, whereas if you kill Noatak, no one's going to-"

"That's not what I mean."

"Look," says Tarrlok, "Don't over-think Noatak too much. Just do what's required in order to stop him from posing a threat."

"Okay," Korra says, lamely. She looks down. "But, I mean, I might be able to kill him pretty easily. I'm still angry at him. I, uh, kind of hate him. But..."

"What?"

"I've spent so much time thinking about all the ways I could fight him," Korra says. "And I'm BORED with thinking about that stuff now! I just want to deal with him and get it over with!" She sits back, propping herself up with her arms. "I hate how much I hate the guy. I don't want him in my head anymore."

"Have you told Katara about any of this?"

"Come to think of it, uh... No."

"Mention it to her. She might feel the same way you do."

"Yeah, I guess." Korra plucks a blade of grass and rolls it between her fingers. "Anyway, I'm just saying that I kind of want to hate Noatak a little less because I don't enjoy hating people, you know?"

Tarrlok isn't sure if her attitude is admirable or dangerous, or if she's just able to afford being benevolent because she's so confident in her own strength. But he still catches himself saying, "You're a good person, Korra."

Korra eyes him, as if she's waiting for him to say, 'but...', and when it becomes clear that he has nothing else to add, she gives him a smile. (A proper smile, not a smirk.) "Thanks."

She's very pretty.

Not that he hasn't noticed this before.

And Tarrlok should be glad that she seems genuinely flattered - he should be glad in a healthy, uncomplicated way - but instead, he wants to walk away and find a nice wall that he can bash his head against. The girl is twenty years younger than him, and while she may look like an adult at a superficial glance, she's still alarmingly immature. Furthermore, she sees him as a charity case, and besides, if he got too attached to her, he'd probably turn jealous and unpleasant, and he's pathetic enough already.

"So, how long will you be learning chi blocking for?" he asks. The question comes out sounding a little terse.

"A week, maybe, while Katara sorts some stuff out," Korra says. "I'll only get to go over the basics. I'm meant to go to South pretty soon for the Glacier Spirits Festival, but I guess we'll see."

Tarrlok doesn't want to think a week ahead. (And shit, the previous Glacier Spirits Festival feels like it was only yesterday. He's not quite sure where the past few months have gone.)

"Guess I won't have time to learn how to give people noodle arms," Korra grumbles.

"Noodle arms?" Tarrlok repeats, then figures out what she means. "Is that the technical term for the technique, Korra?"

"It's what Sifu Ty Lee calls it," Korra says, then purses her lips for a moment. "Hey, I think she's gone back to that room where we had tea when we first got here. You should go talk to her."

"Perhaps I will, later on."

Korra points at him. "You should really, really go talk to Ty Lee."

"Why?"

"Did you ever hear of chi blocking all that much until the Equalists started using it?" Korra says, pointedly.

Oh. "Very well," Tarrlok says, and stands up, looking back towards the house.

Korra picks up the plate of leftover pastries, and holds it up. "Take these with you and eat some."

"I'm not particularly-" Tarrlok begins.

Korra stares at him like she's going to punch him in the throat if he doesn't accept the food.

Tarrlok takes the taro tarts and trudges towards Ty Lee.


	9. Winter, ASC 170

_Winter, ASC 170_

 

The problem with illusions is that they're more troublesome than the truth. 

Noatak leans against a crumbling wall by one of Ruyi's harbors, and struggles to think of a convincing way to kill himself. 

There's the most obvious option: he could find a vagrant with a similar build and appearance, and he could dispose of him, and he could plant his belongings (such as they are; he's only carrying a few fake papers and some money) on the corpse. He could then let the body wash up somewhere, or burn it. He could try to make it look like the triads finally caught up with him. 

But Tarrlok wouldn't really approve of that. 

(The seagulls wheel overhead, screaming to themselves.) 

Or he could come up with some grandiose scheme where he'd lure his enemies to a location and set a deadly trap that (somehow) only he would escape from, unbeknown to everyone else, but that sort of nonsense only ever really works in radio serials. 

(Always end the episode with a cliffhanger.) 

Or he could just steal a boat and find an island somewhere, and wait for everyone to forget that he's alive, and hope that Republic City will face some fresh new crisis that will distract people from the Equalists. There's always someone waiting in the wings. 

But the prospect of living in isolation and being forgotten doesn't seem much different from a prison sentence. 

Noatak closes his eyes, and waits for his brain to come up with a viable idea. 

He scratches his back, just around the edges of his burns, then fidgets until he's relatively comfortable. 

He tells himself that he's not going to move until he's come up with a sound plan. 

The screaming of the seagulls grows faint. 

The wall becomes very comfortable indeed. 

\-- 

Right after the encounter with the vagrant, Wei finds a wine shop and singles out a bottle of baijiu with the best price/alcohol content (this takes him a matter of minutes), then pays with what's left of his money, and marches back to the hotel room. Once he has some privacy (or as much privacy as a guy can have when there's a thing living in his head), he sits down on the floor and commits himself to getting hammered. 

Jing seems to watch him. 

Being watched from inside your own body is a uniquely shitty experience. 

"Look..." Wei says to no one in particular, when he's a third of the way through the first bottle. He can't finish the sentence. He doesn't know what he wants to say. Part of him is still trying to come up with an excuse for his behavior. 

The baijiu doesn't bring any relief. Wei swallows to get rid of the burning in his throat, then asks, "You're wondering what my problem is, right?" 

Jing straightens his back and cants his head to one side, as if to hear better. 

"To be honest, I'm not sure, either," Wei says, and resumes slugging back the contents of the bottle. 

"How is alcohol meant to help?" Jing mutters. He's still sulking. Jing's sense of sulkiness is very distinct from Wei's: it's heavier, but it's got less nuance. It's like a cloud of black ink that's been painted on a wall by a bratty child. It's like a rock that's been thrown through a window. 

"It changes your perspective on things." 

"But it-" 

"Shush. Let me drink. I'm exercising my freedom by deliberately doing something that's kind of stupid. You're gonna notice that I do this a lot." As it seems like a good time to bring it up, Wei asks, "How come you called me 'Wei' earlier on? I never told you my name." 

"I called you Wei?" Jing pauses. The spirit's bad mood is swept aside by a sense of horror. "Oh. Would you believe me if I said that was an accident?" 

Wei doesn't say anything. He swirls the baijiu around in his mouth. 

"Is 'Wei' your real name?" Jing asks, tentatively. 

Well, it's not the name he was born with, but it's a name that's as good as any. "You tell me." 

Jing seems absent for a few seconds, as if he's wandered off to a quiet corner of Wei's mind for a bit of contemplation, and then he says, "You don't think of yourself as the Lieutenant anymore." 

If Jing was sitting in front of Wei right now, Wei would be very inclined to smash the bottle over his head. 

"So you can hear my thoughts," Wei says. 

"Not on purpose." 

"Right." Maybe Wei shouldn't be surprised by any of this. If his mind and body were buildings, they'd have revolving doors. 

Jing bristles in irritation. "I have my own thoughts. I don't want to hear yours as well. Do you know how you picked up my perceptions earlier and they made you ill? Have you considered that maybe it could also go the other way? I don't need to know every nasty little thing that occurs to you." (And Wei thinks he catches the ghost of something unsaid: _when you were unconscious for a month, you used to dream_.) 

Wei considers smashing the baijiu bottle over his _own_ head just so Jing will feel it. 

Jing's fingers - or Wei's fingers, whatever - tighten around the bottle's neck. "You're more dangerous than you realize... Which, incidentally, is one of the reasons _why_ you're dangerous. You see yourself as something small and weak, but you're not like that at all." 

Wei now has to think hard about whether this is meant to be a compliment. 

"Your mind is all just..." Jing holds up his hands, at a loss for words, and then stares at the bottle as if seeing it in a new light. "You want to know something funny? Humans tell a lot of stories about spirits corrupting humans. But spirits tell a lot of stories about humans corrupting spirits." 

"Can't say you're doing much for my self-esteem right now, Jingles," Wei mutters. 

Jing sighs and looks at the ceiling. Everything about him - his anxiety, his frustration - seems earnest, and it's just a little fucked up, but Wei almost wants to sympathize with him. "You know how the oldest case of spirit possession is the Avatar, right? Well..." 

Wei's anger gets shoved aside by curiosity. "What?" 

"Wait, you've never heard that before?" 

"No." 

"Is, uh, that not common knowledge over here? Your Amon never mentioned anything like that? What were you told?" 

Wei snorts. He's been told lots of things. "Story was that the Avatar is a bender who stole three more elements from the spirits, then later made a truce with them and was allowed to keep their powers so long as they acted like a mediator between the two worlds." Or that's the accepted version, at least. 

"That's... Not too far off, actually. But did anyone ever explain how the Avatar was able to use four elements in the first place?" 

"Energybending or whatever." 'Energybending or whatever' is a pretty convenient explanation for a lot of things. How did the Avatar take Fire Lord Ozai's bending? Energybending. How come the Avatar survived 100 years stuck in an iceberg? Energybending. How does Amon do his thing? Enerybending. How do spirits work? Energybending. What makes Flameo's Noodles extra noodley? Why do men get morning wood? How come Wei makes such poor life choices? What is the first law of thermodynamics? Well. Even if 'energybending' isn't a plausible answer, you could probably twist stuff so that it seemed like one, if you just got real creative about it.

"Energybending? Oh, you mean... Ah." Jing takes a swig of alcohol. "Alright, so the human you call the Avatar is actually host to a very old spirit named Raava. The spirit does most of the grunt work - like carrying the four elements - while the human, uh... Does human things. But how many times in your life have you heard of Raava? And how many times in your life have you heard of the Avatar? Who do you think is calling the shots?" 

"Where are you going with this?" 

"Do you see why I have to work _with_ you, and why I ask for your permission to do stuff? This is a two-way street. Human-spirit relationships are always at risk of becoming skewed in one entity's favor, and this could go just as badly for me as for you. You bleed into me. And you're kind of scary." 

Wei. Scary. Actually, he's been told that before. People tend to be a little intimidated by him right until they conclude that he's an idiot. Wei almost laughs. 

"And why the fuck should I believe you're telling me the truth about anything?" Wei asks. 

"You don't have to. I can't demand your trust." 

"You got control over me. Maybe you could _make_ me trust you." 

"But you DON'T trust me! That's the thing!" Jing slugs back more of the baijiu. "If I'm trying to get you to trust me, I'm doing a super terrible job of it! I don't think you'll trust me ever. You're just working with me because you're taking a calculated risk." 

"It wasn't a calculated risk, it was a last resort. You just turned up and offered me a solution when I was completely isolated and at my lowest point. You smelled weakness and you went for it. And..." Wait a minute. "...How did you even know where I was? 

Jing winces. "It's not as sinister as you think. Like I said, I know where everybody is. And everything. Usually." 

"You know where everything is?" 

"Yes. Most of the time." 

"Everything?" 

"Yes!" 

" _Everything?_ " 

"Well, almost everything. It depends on some stuff. It's complicated." 

"I'm..." Wei pauses to think it over. "...Kinda offended that you expect me to believe that." 

"It's true." 

"Fuck off," says Wei. 

Jing holds up his hands in exasperation and looks at the ceiling as if he's trying to find some patience up there. 

"Right. Okay," Wei says. "Let's suppose that, somehow, you're not completely full of bullshit. Let's say that you _do_ know where everything is, whatever the fuck that means. So, if you know where everything is, then uh... how precise are you?" 

"What?" 

"How much do you know? What level do you, like, know about? Do you know where people are? What about organisms under a certain size? Molecules? Atoms? What? I want some specifics." 

Jing starts to speak, then pauses with his mouth agape for a long moment. Then he chugs back baijiu. "Wait. An atom is a human unit of... stuff, isn't it?" 

"Yes." 

"You need to stop seeing things as units all the time," Jing mutters. "It'll make your life difficult." 

"Yeah, you're full of shit. Thought as much." 

Jing slams down the bottle. "You're asking me about levels and units but a lot of things work in a way _where there AREN'T any levels and units_ , or, I don't know, _there ARE levels and units but they're lots of different levels and units all at the same time!_ " 

Wei takes a certain delight in the spirit's displeasure. "Hey, you know what, hang on, I just thought of something else," he says. "You just said you knew where everything is. If you know where everything is, can you tell where everything is going?" 

"...What?" 

Wei thinks of the patterns that he saw while tripping balls. _The past was unchangeable, and the past determined the present_. "If you know all the parts of a system _are_ , then you should be able to predict how that system behaves." 

"Wha..." Jing takes a moment to figure out the implications. "Wait. No. The universe doesn't work like that!" 

Wei speaks as if he's addressing a five year old: "If you have a machine, and you know how all the little cogs in that machine fit together, you know how the machine works." 

"The universe is not a machine. That's just silly." 

"Yeah? Prove it." 

"I don't know how to!" Jing says, and the whine in his voice gives Wei the impression that he's just hit a nerve. Wei wonders if he can make the spirit cry. He wonders if he _should_ make the spirit cry. "I'm not here to get in an argument about the nature of reality with you! I'm just here because I wanted to eat a mind." 

Maybe you should mind what you eat. "Yeah, sure. If you're so powerful and all-knowing, then what's so special about that guy's brain?" 

Jing crosses his arms. "Why do you keep asking me questions when you don't believe anything I say anyway?" 

"Humor me." 

Jing knocks back more baijiu, then wipes his mouth on the back of his wrist. He heaves another sigh. "Your bloodbender identified the bit in humans' heads which allows them to, um, manipulate certain things in certain ways. Like... bending. Humans currently bend in a way that involves, um, treating the world as if it's divided into four elements, because that makes it easier. But, very soon, the gulf between the physical world and the spirit world will wane, and _then_ a lot of humans are going to realize that you don't _have_ to divide things into four elements, and when they figure that out, we're..." Jing pauses. "...Probably fucked. And look at me. Now I'm using profanity." 

Wei takes the baijiu bottle from Jing so he can have some, then realizes that all he's done is pass the bottle from his right hand to his left. "Sure. Right. You think that humans are gonna, what, invade the spirit world or something?" 

"It is a possibility, but I don't want it to get to that point." Jing flops backwards and lies down on the floor. "All you ever do is fight and consume and learn and adapt, and your meat components are constantly decaying, so you're always devouring things in order to live. You try to bend the universe around you. If you can get your hands on something, you exploit it. All you ever do is chew things up and spit them out." 

"Yeah. We do that." Wei suddenly sympathizes with Jing's desire to lie on the floor like a useless fat sack of woe. "You think humans could ever stop being giant assholes?" 

"You're the human. You tell me." 

_You'd have to change the way we all think so's we'd stop fighting each other. But if someone changed the way_ I _thought so's I didn't want to fight no more, I'd think that was fucked up, though I'm probably the wrong person to ask about this shit because I don't know who I'd be if I wasn't angry all the time, BUT if you made humans lose the will to fight, then you'd kinda be turning them into livestock. You'd need to let them_ choose _to stop fighting instead. Though choice is usually an illusion because in the end we just do what we're compelled to do anyhow because there's a limited number of actions we can take so's we just take the one that we thinks optimal based on the info we got available to us, and I swear I had a conversation with Amon about this sometime, so turning people into lifestock might not be that big a deal since we're basically just big dumb animals anyway, like maybe you can't stop people from being controlled, but you can try to pick who controls them, and shit like this is why I drink,_ Wei thinks. 

"Fucked if I know," Wei says. 

Jing manages to drink more baijiu without spilling too much of it on his face. (Wei's face. Not Jing's face. _Wei's_.) "If you could choose to be something other than human, would you?" 

_Yes._ Though the definition of 'human' has always been pretty negotiable anyway. Some people get to be more human than others.

"If you could choose to be something other than a spirit, would you?" Wei asks. 

"I ate a mind. I have human memories mixed in with my own. Some people would say that I'm not a proper spirit anymore anyway." 

Because they are now officially drinking buddies, Wei asks, "How'd you end up eating some guy's memories in the first place?" 

"I'm meant to seek information. And then all of a sudden, it was like, 'oh no Jing, sometimes you can seek the wrong kind of information, blah blah blah you can't repay a transgression with another transgression, if you gain too much human knowledge you'll become like them and you'll try to rise above your station, get out of my library you insolent reprobate' and I was like, 'fine, stay in your horrible bureaucracy forever.'" 

"Library?" 

"It was an awful library. All of the information was out of date. I mean sure, if you _asked_ people why the information was out of date, they'd say, 'Jing, this isn't obsolete data, this is a _historical archive_ ' and you know what, I don't want to talk about it, it makes me angry." 

Huh. 

"There's all that stuff there and _nothing is ever done with it_ ," Jing adds, "because spirits are too dull and boring and they just want things to stay the same forever, because not many of them know what it's like to be made of meat. And the physical world is changing but they're not changing with it, and... I hate people who just sit around and wait for death, because they think they know everything but maybe they don't know what death _means_.. And _you_. You're meant to be human, but you're just as bad. You know the world is a mess, but you're just sitting here drinking. You're complicit in the system." 

'Complicit in the system.' This sounds like the sort of shit Wei used to yell at people when he was younger and didn't know any better. Jing might've made a good Equalist. They could've got him to hand out pamphlets and guilt-trip people into joining their cause. 

"Fuck off, I'm old and tired and I've done my bit, and look where it got me," Wei mutters. 

"No, you're just being a self-pitying alcoholic who enjoys victimhood." 

Wei sits bolt upright so fast that it makes his head spin. " _Excuse me?_ " 

"OH, WHAT, YOU WANT TO FIGHT ME NOW?" Jing yells. "HERE'S AN IDEA: WHY DON'T YOU FIGHT THE GUYS WHO PUT YOU IN THIS SITUATION IN THE FIRST PLACE." 

Wei almost gets to his feet, but hesitates. "...Jing. Stop shouting." 

"OR WHAT? YOU'LL DRINK MORE CHEAP BOOZE AND CRY? 

" _Jing._ " 

Jing puts the back of his wrist against his forehead. "OH NO, MY LIFE IS SO TERRIBLE, I HATE EVERYONE AND I'M SCARED OF EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME, INCLUDING MAKING CHOICES. QUICK, I NEED AN AUTHORITY FIGURE WHO CAN ORDER ME AROUND. PREFERABLY A MALE ONE. WITH WASHBOARD ABS. AND AN IMPRESSIVE-" 

Wei punches himself in the face. Not hard enough to do real damage, just hard enough to make a point. 

"Ow," says Jing. 

Wei just rubs the side of his face and closes his eyes. 

"I was going to say 'ideology'," Jing mutters. "An impressive ideology." 

Wei keeps his eyes shut. He sighs. He hates himself. He hates his life. He does not know how he ended up in this ridiculous situation. Then he says, "To be honest, his ideology wasn't all that great. In retrospect, it kinda leaned a little too far to the right, if you ask me." 

Jing doesn't reply to that. 

"Though, in its defense, it was pretty, uh, easy to grasp," Wei adds. "Its accessibility was a large part of its appeal, though it still had enough, what do you call it, mystique to arouse people's curiosity. I got asked a lot of questions about it. People would be like, 'Lieutenant, do you have any great insights about Amon's ideology that you can share with us?', and I'd say, 'well, you can start off by trying to take a hands-on approach, because it can be a lot to take in at first, though eventually you just gotta sit down and think on it until you're comfortable with-..." He trails off there, and lets out a convulsive laugh. "I don't know why I'm trying to make dick jokes about this. He threw me away." 

Jing still remains silent. 

"I'm going to kill him," Wei says. 

The room swims a little, so he looks at the bottle. (He's been sober for, what, how long until now?) "I'm going to kill him," he repeats. 

Jing's silence lasts for a few more seconds, and then he asks, "You okay?" 

"No, but that suits you just fine, you manipulative little shit." Wei hauls himself up. He considers pouring the rest of the baijiu away, then decides to just set it down on the bedside table instead. "You gonna stop yelling at me now?" 

"Uh, yeah. Maybe I shouldn't have done that," Jing mutters. 

"You know that if someone ever sees me shouting like that again, they're going to have me arrested, right?" 

"Sorry," says Jing. 

"And if I tell people, 'oh, it's not me who's yelling, it's Mr. Jingles my magical talking dog,' they'll lock me up and throw away the key," Wei adds. 

"Sorry. I... feel kind of weird." 

"Yeah. We're drunk. My alcohol tolerance isn't what it used to be." Apparently planning an insurgency does wonders for your ability to stay on the wagon. Wei suddenly feels sad for absolutely no reason whatsoever, so he straightens his shoulders and says, "Anyway. So. Amon." 

"Right," Jing murmurs. 

Where were they? What was the last productive thing that went through Wei's mind before he was waylaid by misery? "You know, uh, you know when I asked you about tranq darts and you said they contained shirshu venom..." Wei says, and tries to find a train of thought that he can hitch a ride on. "...I just remembered something: you said you thought you smelled a shirshu in town earlier?" 

"Yes." Jing sighs, but seems grateful for the change in topic. "I'm so glad you're asking about that. Don't humans use shirshu for finding people? I've always found that really, um, _interesting_ , by the way, how you obtain control of other species and get them to work-" 

Wei cuts him off. "A while back, I told the other Equalists that we could use a shirshu tracker to find Amon. Kind of a coincidence." 

Jing says nothing. 

"I mean, it wasn't, like, all that much of an original idea," Wei adds, "but..." 

Jing waits. 

"I, uh, had an old shirt with Amon's scent on it. And I told them this. And, thank fuck, they were too polite or creeped out to ask _why_ I had one of Amon's shirts. Y'know, I probably didn't even specify that it was a shirt, I probably just said I had some of Amon's old clothes. They probably assumed I'd been keeping his unwashed underpants or something, which, uh... Anyway, I have no idea where that shirt would be right now. Think I might've left it on an airship." 

"You... didn't think to tell me any of this earlier?" Jing says, sounding a little strained. 

"Look, I been busy trying to adjust to the fact that I got someone else living in my body at the moment," Wei says. "You know, I think I want more credit for not screaming and hollering about that." 

"Right," says Jing, through clinched teeth. "Okay. Thank you for this information. I think we should find the shirtshu. Uh. Find the shirshu, rather." 

"Okay. Yeah." The cogs in Wei's head turn away. Fuck. _Fuck_. How many other things has he missed? What has he forgotten? What other questions is he neglecting to ask? 

And does this mean that the vagrant they saw earlier really was Amon? 

"Well?" Jing asks. 

"What?" 

"Can I try picking up a scent again?" Jing asks. "Just to make up for lost time." _Not that the lost time is your fault or anything, Wei._

"Uh, sure," Wei says. _What. Is. He. Missing?_

Jing holds his arms above his head and stretches, then waves his right hand in front of his face. "Nngh. You could've picked a better day to start drinking again. Alright, I'm going to knock you out for a moment, just so you don't violently eject the contents of your stomach out the wrong end of your body like you did the last time. Is that okay?" 

"You can knock me out for a minute. No longer." Uncertainty makes him lenient. 

"That's all I need. I'll count down: I'll put you under in three... two..." 

Wei waits. 

_He's sitting on the stage now, holding the radio that he repaired earlier. He switches the radio on to test it. Human voices seeps out of its speakers. He can almost make out words. Short, sharp words, truancated by grunts of pain. It takes him a moment to realize who the voices belong to. Then he concludes that they're definitely not in pain, though this somehow makes things worse. He switches the radio off, and nearly throws it away from him to smash it (if he had an audience, they might think he was performing some sort of very sad experimental theater), yet something stops him._

_He looks at the pillars holding up the stage's ceiling. The carvings move. They form words, but not in any language he's seen before._

_He can't translate the words exactly, yet he knows their meaning._

_You don't have to smash a radio to make it stop being a radio._

_A radio is just a collection of components arranged in a specific configuration in order to perform a specific function. If you change the configuration, you change the function._

_Wei smacks his forehead._

Then he's back in the hotel room. 

"The shirshu is at the south docks, while the bloodbender is just a short distance away from it," Jing says, as if he's woefully unsurprised by this. He makes a sudden lurching movement to grab the case that contains the bow, then takes a moment to steady himself before making a beeline to the door. But just as he reaches for the handle, he pauses. 

There's that metallic taste in his mouth again. 

Wei sniffs, then licks the back of his wrist. His tongue leaves a small smear of watery blood behind. Nothing dramatic. He's bled more from accidentally biting the inside of his mouth before. 

"What the fuck are you doing to me?" Wei asks. 

Jing rests his palm on the door handle and looks down at the floor. "I'm trying to keep you alive. I'm still learning how to be good for you." There's a pleading note to his voice. "I think I'm getting better." 

"I'm some kind of experiment to you, huh," Wei says, but can't muster any strong emotions about this. 

Jing smiles tentatively. "I just want to know how you work, Wei. Maybe I'll even be able to figure out a way to repair you if you ever get hurt." 

Wei grits his teeth, and opens the door so he can step out into the corridor. 

\-- 

Noatak opens his eyes when he hears screaming, then realizes that it's just the seagulls again. He's still sitting by the harbor. But someone else is present. 

There's a young woman sitting next to him. (She's not the Avatar. His instincts quickly rule that one out.) 

It's almost a relief to know that there's a real flesh and blood person nearby, regardless of the threat they pose. Anything is better than the sense of being watched from afar. 

The young woman looks vaguely familiar; pretty in a nondescript way, with patient eyes. The breeze has teased a few dark wisps of hair free of her bun, and her clothes are plain and formal; she looks like an office worker who's just come out to the harbor for some fresh air during her lunch break. 

The surrounding area is quiet. A short distance away, the members of a fishing crew shout at each other, and the clatter of construction work can be heard over the wind, and of course there's the screech of the birds. But nothing seems amiss. Noatak just narrows his eyes against the daylight and takes no pleasure in the warmth of the winter sun on his face. 

The young woman is looking at him. 

"You need medical attention, sir," she says, almost apologetic. 

Noatak doesn't know if he should reply. He has nothing clever or charming to say. 

"You don't have to be in pain, you know," the woman adds. "It's not solving anything." 

Then Noatak's brain drags its sorry self out of the fog and into the cold light of clarity, and he recognizes her. 

For one horrible moment, he thinks she's Biyu, one of his chi blockers. She has the same build and bearing. But no, she's definitely not Biyu. She's... 

(Many, many years ago, before the Equalists had the aid of Hiroshi Sato, they'd obtained funding from various other sources, and one of their patrons had been a very successful shipping magnate who'd asked them to sabotage the operations of some triads. Just a minor thing, in retrospect. A small commitment. A favor, almost. A gentleman's agreement. Not a task that had any major effect on the Equalist's long-term plans. 

And the Equalists had honored this request, and they'd received a small donation in return, and that had been that, or so it had seemed, and nothing else had come of it... And since then, Noatak always had smirked to himself whenever he'd seen the photographs of the shipping magnate in newspapers. 

And the magnate was, of course, always photographed with his secretary.) 

Noatak's is caught by a jolt of horror and shame. She knows who he is. 

Zhu Li's posture changes subtly, as if his realization has started her somehow. She knows she now has his full attention. He must be utterly transparent to her. He wonders what he looks like, then decides that he doesn't want to know. 

"We don't mean you any harm," she says quickly. 

Judging by her heartbeat, she's not lying. 

Noatak looks around, but he can't see anything unusual, even though she wouldn't have come to him without some sort of backup. The only thing he can identify as an obvious threat is a watchtower that looks out across the harbor; someone could easily get a good shot at him from there. 

Noatak is meant to be more aware of his surroundings than this. This isn't good enough. 

He looks at Zhu Li. He opens his mouth to speak. He isn't sure why he doesn't just grab her and use her as a shield. 

"Seriously, sir," Zhu Li says, gentler now. "We don't mean you any harm." 

Everything about her body language indicates that she's utterly sincere. 

"I'm actually here to offer you a job," Zhu Li adds. 

A job. 

Noatak takes too long to find his voice. "What?" he says, although it barely sounds like a real word. 

"You'd have your own lab," Zhu Li says." A generous income. New paperwork. Interesting research. Five year contract. And once the contract is up, you'll be free to do whatever you want." 

"That, I, uh..." Noatak needs to check that this conversation is actually happening. "...What?" 

"Are you following what I'm saying?" Zhu Li asks, very slowly. 

Noatak stops himself from saying 'what?' again. "I'm not-" He screws his eyes shut for a moment. "Why?"

__Zhu Li looks at him in the manner of a woman who's dangling a piece of steak in front of a dangerous animal. She continues to speak slowly, although not insultingly so; "If your methods could be replicated, then it'd revolutionize the penal system. Consider the costs incurred in order to imprison a metalbender. Compare that to the costs of imprisoning a nonbender."_ _

__This almost sounds reasonable, although Noatak isn't sure what his definition of 'reasonable' is at the moment._ _

__"W-what..." Noatak begins. Shit. "I don't. Ah. Th. Tha-..." Ah, yes. Noatak. Always so clever. So articulate._ _

__Noatak makes himself focus, and hammers out every word like a coffin nail. "And when you have what you want, then what?"_ _

__"You'd be free."_ _

__Noatak could go off on a very long rant about how no one in this world is ever free of anything._ _

__He starts to shake his head, then stops because it's making his headache worse. "No. You wouldn't. Why?" He's still not sure why he's actually participating in this conversation instead of just grabbing her and twisting one of her arms off._ _

__Zhu Li frowns in confusion._ _

__Right. Noatak takes a moment to line up his words in mind, visualizing them as if he's writing the draft of a speech, then say: "Why would you let me go free once you're done with me? I could incriminate you. You've just offered to shelter a fugitive. You have no reason to let me live."_ _

__"Five years should provide you with plenty of time to convince us that you're worth more alive than dead," Zhu Li says, like it's just that simple._ _

__Noatak glances to the watch tower again. "And what if I still refuse?"_ _

__"You can walk away," says Zhu Li. "Then you'd spend the rest of your life waiting for the next person to track you down."_ _

__Noatak is struck by a flash of rage, although he can't sustain it. She's right._ _

__"Frankly, if we meant you any ill-will, then I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you," Zhu Li says. "I'm taking a huge risk just by being within your bending range. And if you accepted our offer, we'd have to... invest a lot of trust in you."_ _

__"That sounds a little like an attempt at flattery," Noatak murmurs._ _

__Zhu Li gives him a look of mild indignation. "I'm not stupid, sir. We've all seen what you're capable of."_ _

__Noatak doesn't reply._ _

__"Well," Zhu Li says, and moves as if she's about to stand up, "Maybe I should come back later when you're feeling more talkative. Any questions you want to ask before I leave? I could give you an update regarding your friend with the mustache."_ _

__It takes Noatak a moment to figure out what she means, and then he looks up. For just a few seconds, he's capable of experiencing genuine curiosity again._ _

__"We made contact with him a while back, and then he disappeared," Zhu Li says._ _

__Noatak shouldn't reply. Even if his (or rather, Amon's) Lieutenant was ( _is_ ) still alive, then he's probably clutching a bottle of grain alcohol/paint thinner and lying face down in a puddle of his own bodily fluids by now. Probably. If he's still alive. If the police or the triads haven't got to him yet. _ _

__"Disappeared," Noatak repeats._ _

__"We intercepted him some distance from the Yiwen coast. He killed one man and injured two others before escaping."_ _

__Noatak smiles. Something cold and primal takes control, and he's able to enunciate perfectly as he says, "If I ever have reason to believe that you are making a deliberate attempt to provoke a reaction from me, then I will make you bite your own tongue off."_ _

__Zhu Li's heart beats like that of a frightened rabbit. "Understood, sir."_ _

__Noatak's can't hold his smile. It requires too much effort. He doesn't actually want to make anyone bite their own tongue off today. "You're a very good liar," he says, just to give credit where it's due._ _

__Zhu Li chooses her answer carefully before speaking again. "This is true. But I haven't lied to you at all, sir."_ _

__"You could also be lying about that."_ _

__"You're too smart for me, sir," Zhu Li says, utterly deadpan._ _

__Noatak stares at her for a moment, then lets out a very loud and un-Amon-like snort. Zhu Li's heartbeat remains rapid, though she hides it well._ _

__"Do you know where the others are?" Noatak asks._ _

__"The others?"_ _

__"My former colleagues." Not an easy question to ask._ _

__"Excuse my asking, but when was the last time you read a newspaper?" Zhu Li asks._ _

__That would've been when he was still in Republic City._ _

__When Noatak doesn't answer, Zhu Li just nods slowly. "You might want to read a newspaper. But quite a lot of your colleagues are still free, apparently._ _

__Noatak almost says, 'have you contacted any of them?', but he can guess the answer to that already._ _

__He looks out across the harbor. "Your offer sounds too good to be true."_ _

__Zhu Li offers an uncomfortable smile. "Not entirely, sir. You'll have very reduced freedom for five years. But at least you'll be protected."_ _

__Of course. Protection. Noatak wants to roll his eyes. But he also pauses, and takes a moment to ask himself: _how scared am I?_ People are evidently capable of finding him. All they need to do is wait, and watch, and pick the right moment to attack. _ _

__"Say I accepted your offer. Where would I go?" he asks, though he's disgusted with himself. Things aren't meant to happen this way. He's meant to come up with his own solutions. Maybe he lost his sense of self-determination when he lost Amon. Inasmuch as he _can_ lose Amon. _ _

__"We have a ship that's just a five minute walk away. We reasoned that you might want to stay close to the sea. The ship would take you to another vessel that's some way out. That would be where you'd work. We'd bring you anything you want."_ _

__Noatak nods slowly. His back itches. His throat is raw from the effort of speech._ _

__"You people are insane," he says._ _

__"We think outside of the box, sir."_ _

__"I don't-" Noatak says, and rubs his face._ _

__Zhu Li just watches him._ _

__"...I know that none of this will end well," Noatak says._ _

__"If we were going to hurt you, we would've done something to you while you were asleep."_ _

__"You just want me to drop my guard."_ _

__Zhu Li frowns again. "You've already dropped your guard. You're ill."_ _

__"I just," Noatak says, "Need a rest." He puts his head in his hands and chuckles quietly. Maybe new ideas will come to him after he's had some decent sleep. Maybe he can buy some time until he thinks of something clever. "I'll go with you on one condition: you have to tell me how you found me."_ _

__Zhu Li replies without hesitation, as if she doesn't even need a moment to decide how honest she should be. "Your, uh, your _friend_ had some of your clothing. He left it on one of the airships we intercepted. We were able to figure out your general location using that." _ _

__"You used a shirshu, didn't you?" Noatak mutters._ _

__Zhu Li nods._ _

__The Equalists had (and look, he's already using past tense for them) a shirshu tracker among their contacts. There are only so many shirshu trackers in the world. It's possible that Noatak was tracked by the same person._ _

__"How many of my former colleagues are already on your payroll?" Noatak asks._ _

__Zhu Li seems to steel herself before answering, "I can't disclose that. But, suffice to say, we'll ensure you don't run into each other."_ _

__"That's not good enough. They'll know you intended to contact me. They'll know."_ _

__"Well, if they're working for us, then that means we're keeping a close eye on them," Zhu Li says, confident despite her fear of him._ _

__Noatak gives a laugh that threatens to turn into a coughing fit. "You think you can just buy everyone, don't you?"_ _

__"No," Zhu Li replies, and Noatak almost expects her to say, _some people can't be brought_. "Some people have no sense of self-preservation, and there's no point in trying to appeal to individuals like that. But a lot of your former colleagues recognized a good opportunity when they saw it. They're not st-" _ _

__Noatak cuts her off. "You honestly tracked me using some of my clothing?"_ _

__"Yes."_ _

__"What sort of clothes were they?"_ _

__"Just a shirt, sir."_ _

__"He kept one of my shirts," Noatak mutters to himself, oddly unsurprised by this._ _

__"Sir?" says Zhu Li._ _

__Noatak fixes Zhu Li with a hard stare. "And you say you don't know where he is?"_ _

__Zhu Li seems confused by the question, and then she realizes who he's referring to. "...No, sir. It's as I said. He disappeared. He was being escorting to a safe location the mainland, and he managed to crash the vehicle he was in, and then..." She shrugs. "His tracks led about a mile into a nearby forest, but we saw no trace of him beyond that."_ _

__It's likely that something ate him. That seems par for the course, given the Lieutenant's luck. But, even so..._ _

__"And you said I could have anything I wanted, didn't you?" Noatak asks._ _

__"...Yes, sir?"_ _

__"I want confirmation that he's dead or imprisoned." Merely as a precaution. Though 'dead' and 'imprisoned' probably mean the same thing to that one, as the Lieutenant already knows what prison is like. It used to be Amon's job to sort him out whenever he'd have the occasional nightmare about it._ _

__"Um," says Zhu Li. "Of course. If that's what you want."_ _

__Noatak scratches his nose, just so he can hide the way that his mouth keeps trying to twist into a smile. "You said he'd killed someone?"_ _

__"Yes."_ _

__"Are you sure he did it on purpose?" Noatak asks, because this is the Lieutenant they're talking about._ _

__"It... Looked that way, sir."_ _

__Hmm._ _

__Noatak keeps looking Zhu Li in the eye, and maintains a grave expression as he says, "That's interesting. May I offer a word of advice?"_ _

__Zhu Li leans away a little. "Uh. Sure."_ _

__"Never stick your dick in crazy," Noatak intones._ _

__Zhu Li stares at him._ _

__Noatak inwardly laughs at her reaction, and slowly stands up. His joints hurt. Everything feels like it's decaying. He's not human anymore; he's just a very lively corpse. He probably smells like one already. "Right," he says, "I will accept your offer on the basis that I have nothing better to do. Lead me to the ship."_ _

__Zhu Li allows herself to exhale._ _

__\--_ _

__The ship is a small freighter, an ugly Fire Nation contraption with two smoke stacks and a hull that sits high in the water. Noatak follows Zhu Li up the gangplank, though he pauses when he's halfway up so he can look back over the harbor. He doesn't know what he's doing._ _

__He hesitates again when he reaches the top of the gangplank, when it becomes evident that Zhu Li intends to lead him further below decks._ _

__"Oh," she says, and turns to look at him. "Would you prefer to stay on the main deck?"_ _

__"That would be better." Noatak doesn't know how he'll fare with being surrounded by metal. Maybe this is what prisons are like. Metal and heat. The day is cold, but the smell of burning coal still makes him think of furnaces._ _

__"If you stay here, then I'll bring the medic to you," Zhu Li says._ _

__Noatak waits, and finds a spot behind a lifeboat where he won't be visible to anyone observing the ship from the mainland. He focuses on the comforting weight of the sea, which is pliant and alive, though this just makes the poisonous bulk of the ship seem more distasteful in contrast._ _

__Zhu Li soon reappears with the medic. The medic is a young Water Tribesman - probably Southern, judging by his features - who does a passable job at hiding his anxiety. He offers a polite bow, then gestures to the dirty bandages on the back of Noatak's neck. "Would you like those changed, sir?"_ _

__Noatak shrugs, and sits down on the deck. He starts to remove his shirt. The medic might as well change all of the bandages on his back while he's at it; some of them are probably stuck together anyway._ _

__Noatak takes a perverse joy in seeing Zhu Li recoil, even as the cold air on his skin makes him nauseous._ _

__"I swear that these burns aren't stage makeup," Noatak says, then laughs._ _

__The medic kneels next to him. Noatak senses movement as the medic begins to unfasten the water flask on his belt, but then the young man pauses. "...Would you like some painkillers?" the medic mumbles. "I think you'd like some painkillers. I'm, uh, going to soak these bandages off."_ _

__"I'll manage," Noatak says._ _

__The medic mutters something, and gets to work, and then Noatak regrets what he's just said. It hurts when the medic applies the water. It hurts even more when the medic begins peeling at things. He suspects that the medic is skinning him. Noatak isn't good for very much these days, but perhaps someone could make a nice pair of boots. All leather, genuine bloodbender. Noatak clenches his fists and sets his jaw._ _

__He doesn't endure the pain because he's making some sad attempt at penitence; he endures it because he has more pride than common sense._ _

__He knows it's bad when he catches himself thinking, 'fuck this, I want to go home'._ _

__"Um..." says Zhu Li._ _

__"Actually, you know what, give me the painkillers," Noatak says._ _

__The medic immediately stops trying to flay Noatak, and offers him a small vial of something. Noatak drinks it slowly as possible. Looking stoic was much easier when he wore a mask all the time._ _

__Then he closes his eyes, and waits for the painkillers to kick in. He's dimly aware of the ship's engines thumping into life. He feels movement. The ship cleaves through the water, dragging itself out of the harbor. There's a gentle violence to it, but the sea doesn't care. The sea is capable of yielding and engulfing. That's what makes it dangerous. Noatak thinks of all the cliches about the sea being female and vindictive. Though maybe he shouldn't think of them as cliches. Maybe he shouldn't even be at sea in the first place._ _

__The medic changes Noatak's bandages and cleans his wounds. It would be convenient if Noatak could shed his skin entirely. He only feels a vague sense of invasion throughout the process, though he takes a little interest in the medic's technique. The medic is good. The medic must have received very good training. The medic is a talented young man with a promising future. How nice for the medic._ _

__When the worst of it is over, and the painkillers make the world seem like a relatively better place, the medic sidles off, and Noatak stands up. Zhu Li remains close by. Noatak starts to put his clothes back on. Zhu Li just clears her throat and says, "We could wash those for you, if you'd like?"_ _

__"That can wait," says Noatak. He leans against the railing of the ship, and tries not to think about how satisfying it would be if he scratched his back against the handrail._ _

__Zhu Li stands next to him. He doesn't actually mind her presence (though the feeling clearly isn't mutual). She's unobtrusive, and unpretentiously intelligent. He can see why her boss likes her. He imagines throwing her into the sea, just to upset her employer, then tells himself to grow up._ _

__"I think I'm struggling to believe that you think..." Noatak begins, then takes a deep breath and tries again; "I'm still struggling to believe that you genuinely think any of this is a good idea."_ _

__"Why is that, sir?" Zhu Li asks._ _

__Noatak just turns to look at her and raises his eyebrows._ _

__"We both know how dangerous bending is," Zhu Li says. "And you must know that there's great interest in finding ways to... permanently neutralize it. Furthermore, your knowledge could grant us greater insight into how it works."_ _

__Noatak taps his temples. "I don't do anything too special. It's just brain damage. You can switch off all sorts of things if you tinker with what's up here. Bending. Speech. Emotion. Reasoning. Memory. Temporal awareness."_ _

__Zhu Li looks like she doesn't know how to reply. She's probably too busy wondering just how far some of his experiments went. Anyone with half a brain would've figured out that Amon didn't get his powers from the spirits. Amon got his powers from Noatak's hard work. The spirits couldn't give a flying fuck about humans. (And who can blame them?)_ _

__"With the correct manipulation, you might be able to re-write someone's entire personality if you were so way inclined," Noatak continues. "I can think of plenty of people who might be interested in something like that." (He keeps himself from stage-whispering the 'BA SING SE' at her.)_ _

__Zhu Li removes her glasses so she can polish them. "There are already tried and true methods for that sort of thing."_ _

__"They're so long-winded though," Noatak says. "As far as I know, there's still a lot of room for refinement." Then he smiles. "Not that I have much to contribute in that field. Amon had to gain his _followers the hard way.__ _

___Zhu Li just puts her glasses back on and leans against the railing._ _ _

___"Bending's not really that important, is it?" Noatak mutters, almost to himself. It's not an easy thing to say. "It was never the thing that made me dangerous."_ _ _

___Zhu Li frows. "As a non-bender, I would say that bending isn't the sole determinant of a person's power... But I would say that bending helps, sir."_ _ _

___"Bending makes you an effective weapon, but it still depends on who's wielding you," Noatak says. He catches himself grimacing a little, and he almost makes an effort to adopt a more neutral expression, then decides that he can't be bothered. He'll let himself grimace if he wants to. "So you'll have me for five years, then. Perhaps you think that if I like the arrangement enough, I'll continue to work for you after those five years are up."_ _ _

___"We'll see," says Zhu Li._ _ _

___The whole deal is cowardly at best and dangerous at worst. But Noatak wasn't lying when he told Tarrlok that he wanted a quiet life. If there's any chance of that happening, no matter how slim, then he'll take it._ _ _

___"I think I'd like to be alone for a while so I can think this over," Noatak says, and pictures himself: a scarred, mysterious figure staring moodily at the sea. The mental image makes him want to laugh. Actually, it's doubtful that Zhu Li views him that way at all. If he looks half as rough as he feels, then it's probably a small wonder that she's willing to talk to him._ _ _

___Zhu Li nods. "I'll be on the bridge, though if you want anything, you can inform any member of the crew."_ _ _

___"Noted," says Noatak, then stares at her until she makes a perfunctory bow and walks away._ _ _

___Noatak finds an area of the deck where he won't be in anyone's way, sits down, and closes his eyes._ _ _


	10. Winter, ASC 170

Jing marches out the hotel, onto a street that's the color of a faded newspaper photograph. The breeze nips at his nose, bringing the stink from the nearby docks, and Jing keeps moving, long strides leading him towards the sea.

His route winds down forgettable little roads, over cracked pavements, past buildings scabbed with salt. He pauses when he reaches a crossroad, and raises his face to the wind. His ears strain to listen. Wei's heart thumps in his chest.

The only other person on the street is an old woman who's about to tip a bucket of water into the gutter.

"I need to get a bearing on your guy again," Jing asks Wei. "Can I do that?"

Again? Wei can still taste blood from the last time that Jing tried to do his spirit bullshit. Still, that doesn't seem like a good enough reason to complain; the taste is faint, and Wei's never had much of a life expectancy anyway. Wei nods.

Again, there's the sensation of blinking. 

Wei sees patterns once more, but they're no longer so overwhelming, no longer bright enough that they might burn his mind out. There's still the vague sense that he shouldn't be looking at them, but so what? He'll look at whatever he likes, thank you very much. No one gets to tell him what to do. Not anymore.

And it occurs to him that maybe he can do more with the patterns than just look at them. _Change the configuration, change the function._ Some of the patterns are humans. What would happen if you altered them? What purpose would they then serve? That's a horrible thought, isn't it? That people can be repurposed. But it's true. They're just big dumb animals anyway. Messy little tangles of wants and needs, always hungry, always devouring. Living things survive by stealing energy from each other. It's a dog-eat-dog world, buddy. And, in all fairness, bosintang tastes pretty good.

Then something shifts, and Wei refocuses.

The street still looks the same. The old woman has just finished emptying the bucket. Wei can't taste any more blood, but he can smell it slightly, though no longer sure if the blood is his own.

"He's moved," Jing says, from somewhere distant. "He's moved in the past ten minutes." Then he seems to think about something, and adds, "Crap."

"What?" says Wei.

"We've just missed him. He's headed out to sea."

The old woman looks up and fixes them with a stare. Jing ignores her and walks on, then slips into a yard behind a boarded-up shop.

Once they're sure they have some privacy, Jing continues, "The further he is from land, the harder he'll be to track. And the sea isn't a good place to be right now. The boundaries are very thin, and there are... A lot of people out there who don't like humans."

"Yeah, that's..." Wei begins, then forces himself to focus on reality. "Wait. You're saying he's actually _at_ sea right now?"

"Yes. Just about."

"What about the shirshu?"

"The shirshu's now in a truck heading north, in the opposite direction from him."

"And what the fuck does that mean?"

"I'm not sure, possibly that if the shirshu tracker _was_ looking for him, then they've found him, and their job is done, and they're now heading back home. Or maybe the target noticed he was being tracked, and now he's gone out to sea in the hope that it'll break the trail."

"How far out to sea is our guy right now?"

"About a mile."

"And, what, you think we should follow him?"

"Yes."

"And catch up with him? While he's at sea?"

"Yes."

"How the fuck do we fight a waterbender at sea?"

"The same way you'd fight an earthbender who's on land?" Jing says. "Or an airbender who's... in an environment with air? That's not our main issue. Frankly, I'm more concerned with-"

"Yeah, but-" Wei isn't sure where he's going with this. He can't argue that it's too dangerous to fight the bloodbender while he's in his element. The bloodbender is always in his element. Technically, he's _made_ of his element.

"What do you mean he's heading out to sea?" Wei asks. "Is he on a boat? Is he swimming? Is he floating face-down in the water? Has he decided to fuck off back to whatever fuckin' abyssal trench he was spawned from? What?"

"He's on a ship. There are fifteen other people aboard, nine men and six women, all very healthy. The ship runs on coal and is travelling at five knots, maybe. It's slowly accelerating. It's a..." Jing hesitates as if he's lost his train of thought, and for just a split second, Wei almost believes that there's a third person in his head with him, although they're not really a person, just a ghost of one. "...It's a... It _was_ a Garsai-class frigate. It's an old ship. Badly maintained. I can't you much more."

A stab of pain lances through Wei's temples. He tries to concentrate.

"What if, instead of following Am-... Captain Fuckface, we tried following the shirshu tracker and wringing some information out of him?" Wei asks, because the whole idea of fighting a waterbender at sea still sounds stupid. (Not that the stupidity of an idea has ever deterred Wei from acting on it before.) "I want to know who else is tracking our man."

"We could do that, but I don't actually care about the shirshu tracker because the shirshu tracker _isn't someone whose mind I want to eat_ ," Jing says though gritted teeth, and Wei gets it. He feels a pang of something that isn't quite hunger, and isn't quite lust. A jolt of intense curiosity, perhaps. He needs to find the bloodbender, and then this whole mess will reach its conclusion, and they can move on to something else. The bloodbender is just a component.

"Alright," Wei says. "Can't we just wait for our guy to reach land again, and then we can attack him when, y'know, he's not on a ship?"

"Why do you want to delay things further?"

"I don't. I'm just not sure if we wanna pick a fight with a waterbender at sea right now. Unless you got any bright ideas? Any spirit magic crap that'd give us an edge?"

Jing frowns. "I'm saving my energy for opening a door back to the spirit world."

That figures. Wei doesn't know how it figures, but it does. The physical world is too heavy and inelegant. You need to dig your way out of it. (Wei's headache persists, but he no longer cares.) 

"Can't you get more?" Wei muses.

"What?"

"More energy." The idea just pops into Wei's mind by itself. He thinks of the stories about foxes eating human organs. Don't spirits become stronger if they feed off mortals?

Jing hesitates, then says, "I don't think that's necessary."

"Yet eating minds is okay."

Jing hesitates again. "It's just the one mind."

"Right. Just one. You can stop whenever you want."

Jing lets his hands fall down by his sides, and looks around the yard as if picking out an escape route.

"Aren't foxes meant to go nuts about eating hearts, or livers, or something like that?" Wei asks. "Though it's not as if _you're_ doing that kind of shit. You just want to eat a mind. Just one mind. Actually, it's technically your second mind, but... Hey, it's not like it's a _problem_."

Jing still doesn't speak. His breathing has quickened.

"Knowledge is power, right?" Wei says.

"Look," says Jing, and refrains from adding 'you little shit', "I don't need to... To resort to certain measures. I'm perfectly confident in my-"

"Do you have to eat the liver raw, or can you fry it with peppers?" Wei says, because he's enjoying himself again.

"Wei, that's-"

"What about hearts? They're best pan-seared. Though brains are your thing, right? They go better in soup."

"There are lines we will not cross," Jing says, very slowly.

"Yeah, that's what everyone says when they start out. Maybe you should be honest with yourself and just skip ahead to the part where you've become everything you hate. Might save time. Spare you the slow, painful process of gradual disillusionment." Wei knows about slippery slopes. Wei has been down so many slippery slopes during his lifetime that, by this point, he just wants to zoom down them with his hands in the air while going 'wheeeeeeeee'. "Anyway, whatever. What's your plan for chasing after our bloodbender?"

Something unfurls behind Wei's temples and, for a split second, it's like his brainpan has been filled with phosphorus.

It happens too fast for him to scream.

Then Jing takes a huge breath and counts to ten, like a parent who's just caught themselves before they could slap their misbehaving child.

With great patience, Jing asks, "What the hell is your problem?"

Wei realizes that he's put both his hands over his forehead. He carefully lowers them.

"I'd need at least two hours to answer that properly," Wei says, before it occurs to him to apologize. Jing dislikes rudeness. Wei's words come out small and sad, colored by his awareness that he was being an asshole for no good reason just a moment ago, "Sorry. I'm just... Not myself, I guess."

Jing yawns to make himself relax, and looks up at the grey sky. His voice is gentle again. "I should expect as much. Under the circumstances, you're holding up remarkably well. Still, the sooner we get things over with, the better." He sniffs at the breeze, just enough to catch the scent of the harbor again, and says, "Anyway. Moving on. We'll need to steal a boat."

Wei clears his throat, and tries to convince himself that he's a functional grown-up who's capable of handling stressful life events such as betrayal, revenge missions, intermittent hallucinations, and spirit possession.

"I figure that's just like stealing a Satomobile," Wei says. He's stolen a Satomobile before. Which now seems kind of funny given that he works - no wait, _worked_ , past-tense again - with a guy who owned warehouses full of the things.

"Then we need to catch up with our target," Jing continues, "and..."

"And infiltrate a ship that contains a bunch of guards and a human weapon who can control water. At sea." Wei already hates the sea. Fuck the sea.

"Um," says Jing.

They stand there and reconsider their choices. Their shitty, awful choices.

Wei scratches his chin. 

"Hey. If you're saving your energy for opening a door between worlds, then what if you used my chi to give you a, fuck it, I don't know, a boost? So's you'd have an extra kick up the ass in a fight, y'know," Wei says, although he can't believe he's asking this. "Just to improve our odds."

Jing seems to recoil. "Uh, because then you'll accuse me of being some sort of parasite?"

Wei almost says, _I figure you're a parasite already_ , but something stops him. He knows, he just _knows_ , that this comment would not go down well. 

"Nah," Wei says. "I just know that you don't get anything without paying for it, and I'm willing to pay extra if it means I get to punch a waterbender in the balls."

"Are you seriously consenting to let me borrow your life? Really?"

"I've wasted my entire life anyway, and... Put it this way: given my career history, I don't think anyone would be willing to sell me life insurance by this point. And I always knew spirits'd be the death of me, I just figured they'd be the kind in a bottle. What the hell. Use me as a battery."

"You are the most inconsistent human I have ever met!" Jing snaps. "You don't trust me at all, but then you go and offer yourself like this!"

Wei stops himself from asking, 'Why do you care?' which is probably yet another thing that would make Jing mad, and instead says, "Huh. I really piss you off."

"I'm trying to act in your best interests, which is rather difficult when you don't seem to know what your best interests actually _are_." Jing crosses his arms and leans against the wall. He's scowling, but it's a contemplative kind of scowling. Wei gets the sense of machinery moving, somewhere out of sight. "...Fine. If the situation calls for it, then I will borrow a tiny bit of chi from you. Just enough for me to make the physical world a bit less solid. And you'll only have a bad case of anaemia for a while. Nothing worse. It won't make a massive improvement to our effectiveness in combat, but... Whatever."

"Okay."

"For the record," Jing says, holding up his index finger, "if I _did_ burn enough chi for it to make a massive improvement to our effectiveness in combat, your mind wouldn't be able to handle it, and you would probably go mad with power, and then die."

Wei considers this. "Would I laugh maniacally and get, like, glowing eyes and shit?"

"No. And... No."

Well, that's no fun. It looks like Wei will have to continue being the boring kind of mad, which apparently involves heavy drinking, poor sleeping habits, an oversensitivity to loud noises, and the constant nagging feeling that something horrible is about to happen at any given moment. Being mad with power seems a lot more enjoyable than being mad with powerlessness. Wei shrugs. "So if we're not gonna be that much stronger than normal, then what other kinda advantages are we gonna have in this fight?"

"Let me think," says Jing.

They think.

"...What did you just say about people hating humans?" Wei muses. "By 'people', you mean other spirits, right? Other spirits hate humans?"

"Yes," Jing says. "But. They wouldn't help us if we asked them."

"Why not?"

"I'm not... I mean, we have ideological differences," Jing mutters. "They think you're vermin. I think you're an interesting species that merits further study."

"They hate humans," Wei mutters. 

"Yes."

"The other spirits hate humans."

"Yes, Wei. That they do. They do hate humans."

Wei nods slowly. "Then who says we need to _ask_ for their help?"

Little cogs turn.

"...Oh," says Jing, as Wei's idea comes into focus, bleeding through to him. Then he says, "Oh," a second time, as if he's just had it confirmed that Wei is batshit insane. "I see. That's..."

Wei waits for Jing's opinion.

"That might feasible," Jing says. "I mean, maybe I'm only saying this because we're both still drunk, but. That might be feasible."

"We just need to create a distraction, grab the bloodbender, and run, right?" Wei says. "We don't gotta kick anyone's ass. We just want the one guy. And all we gotta do is incapacitate him so's we can drag him into the spirit world." 

Wei's comment lingers in his mind for a moment - _so's we can drag him into the spirit world_ \- and he isn't sure why he said _we_ and not _you_. Why the hell would Wei want to go back to the spirit world?

Then again, given the plan they have in mind, Wei won't want to hang around in the physical world for long after they've grabbed the bloodbender.

"We just need to confuse the shit out of everyone so they're not looking too close at us," Wei muses. "That's all."

Jing lets out an unhappy little chortle. "You make it sound so simple, but yes."

"Well, we got a plan then."

"Sort of. But I don't understand. The, um... The plan that you're proposing right now has an even greater chance of failure than my original idea of just shooting the bloodbender from a rooftop. Which, I might add, you refused to do because you said it was too risky." 

"To be fair," Wei says, "I reckon the increased risk is offset by the fact that this plan will look a hell of a lot less chickenshit than shooting a guy in the back." 

Jing only grunts (and there's something so _Wei-like_ the grunt that Wei starts to wonder if he's just been talking to himself all day) and starts walking again.

\--

The sky darkens.

Wei is right about boats: stealing one is no worse than trying to steal a Satomobile. The hardest part is locating one that's suitable, and that's mostly a matter of luck.

The nicest boats belong to the harbor patrol, and the harbor patrolmen look like a bunch of bargain-basement cops, so Jing sniffs the air in order to figure out their routes, then finds a nice warehouse with a good view of the surrounding wharves. 

Jing climbs onto the warehouse's roof, assembles his bow, and waits for a patrolman to pass by. Sure enough, some luckless asshole in a uniform pootles by on his little motorboat, quite unaware that some human-spirit abomination is about to snipe him from a rooftop.

Jing dings the harbor patrolman in the shoulder (the guy topples forwards with a small yelp), then slips down to ground level before making a preposterously huge leap from the wharf to the patrol boat. He lands with a thump, sticks out his arms as the boat wobbles under his feet, and then he gingerly takes the control column so he can steer the boat to the side of the wharf.

He's just in the process of hauling the patrolman back onto land, intent on hiding him behind some crates, when Wei asks, "Wait, is this guy dead?"

"Shirshu venom, Wei. Like I told you. He's just knocked out, that's all," Jing says. "Besides, look at the puncture wound. It's a shallow injury."

"Huh."

Jing then pauses. "...You know, we should steal his uniform so people will think we're a patrolman as well."

"That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard," Wei whispers back, regardless of the fact that he really wants to do that. Still, there's no way he's removing another guy's clothing ever again unless the guy respects him and buys him dinner first.

They leave the patrolman with his pants on, and return to the boat so they can make a quick inspection of it. The fuel tank is almost full (Wei's luck isn't shit all the time), and the engine is nice and easy to figure out. Better yet, there's a good length of rope and a grappling hook stowed away in one the boat's compartments.(Jing lets out a quiet 'woo hoo!' at this discovery, while Wei just wonders if he can still throw a bola with any accuracy. It's been a while.)

Wei putters away from the wharf, and only applies the throttle once they're a safe distance away.

As the sky turns from grey to black, and Ruyi recedes into the distance until it looks like a cluster of lights, Jing speaks again. "So, I take it that you saw how I shot that patrolman? Wasn't that a good shot?"

"I guess," says Wei

"I think it was _such_ a good shot."

Wei stares out to sea, even though there's fuck-all to look at.

"There was hardly any blood. And I only hit muscle. Not bone. No, no damage to the underlying skeleton whatsever. And I avoided all of the major blood vessels," Jing continues.

"Yeah. Great," Wei mutters.

"I can tell you about all the blood vessels you have in your arms, you know," says Jing. "I know where they all are!"

"Good for you."

"It's all just like engineering, really. Plumbing, even."

"Okay."

"I'm like a surgeon."

"Sure."

"Surgeons are just meat engineers anyway."

"Right."

"Such a good shot," Jing repeats.

"That's great, kiddo. Congrats."

Jing spends the next twenty minutes of the boat ride with a stupid smirk on his face.

The boat ploughs through the gentle waves. Wei might hate the sea, but the sea, it seems, does not hate Wei right now. It's a calm, clear night, illuminated by a crescent moon, although Wei still shivers. His surroundings are utterly alien to him. He's used to buildings, and people, and movement. The endless expanse of water doesn't look quite real.

"Hey Jing," Wei says, because he's beginning to miss the sound of his own voice, "I was wondering: what if I'm just going nuts, and you're just a really convincing hallucination? Because I keep, uh... I mean, are you a hallucination?"

Jing gives this some thought, then answers, "I don't feel like I'm a hallucination."

Wei forces a tired smile. He almost wishes he was still in the hotel room with the booze. "Maybe I'm the hallucination. Are you hallucinating me?"

"The existence that we know is all one great illusion anyway. You're hallucinating yourself."

"Thought I would've hallucinated something better than this."

Jing wiggles his eyebrows. "If I hallucinated you, I'd congratulate myself for hallucinating such a nice pair of legs."

"Not helping, Jing."

"Sorry."

"Y'know, speaking of which..." Wei says, and thinks of the red stage and the patterns. "You _can_ make people see illusions, right? Like the 'turning rocks into money' thing. That's like the sort of stuff I'd hear about in stories as a kid. Proper old-fashioned spirit shit."

"Yes. I need to give you a demonstration when we have the time," Jing says. "Although, it probably wouldn't work on you, because you'd already be convinced that the rocks were rocks. You wouldn't be able to suspend your disbelief."

"So you can make people hallucinate. If you want to." Wei considers the implications of this, then... Doesn't really feel as angry about those implications as he should. Maybe the anger's just going to creep up on him slowly. Maybe he'll be seething mad in, oh, say... Two hours or so, once he's convinced himself that his (recent) psychological issues are all Jing's fault.

"In a fashion," Jing admits. "I can just change what they perceive and what they remember, which kind of go together."

"You can change people's memories?"

_Change the configuration, change the function._

Now Jing sounds uneasy. "Technically. Yes."

 _Technically?_ "How much can you change them? Can you re-write a few minutes here and there, or what?"

"I... don't know. I think I could. I've never tried it before."

"But you can _eat_ memories, right?"

"Yes."

"Which means, what, their owner loses them completely?"

"So far, yes," Jing says, in the voice of someone who's just realized, too late, that honesty isn't always the best policy.

Wei would ask about why he keeps seeing a red stage, but a different concern springs to mind, and this new concern takes priority:

"So if I got arrested while you were possessing me," Wei says, "you could just wipe all my memories of you, and then you could skedaddle and no one would know you were ever involved. And I'd just look like some whackjob who was simply out for revenge against Amon, right?"

Oh.

That's...

Is that what Wei's been struggling to realize all along? That he's just a _thing_ which can be rewritten?

"It would've been a last resort," Jing says. He doesn't even try to lie. "But even then, I'm not sure I would've... Wei, please understand. _It would've been a last resort._ "

Wei isn't even sure if he's capable of anger any more. There's an icy deadness where the anger is meant to be. It's almost quite nice.

Wei just snorts at Jing, and Jing seems to withdraw, cowering away from Wei's awareness.

They travel in silence for a while.

"Can I ask for a favor?" Wei says, once he's willing to speak again. The favor is one that's worth asking. For all Jing's issues, the spirit still seems to have a conscience, which is much more than you can say for a lot of humans.

Jing's voice is an apologetic murmur. "Yes?"

"If I get arrested, don't mess with my memory. Just kill me."

"You're not going to get arrested."

"Right."

"If anything happened to you, it'd reflect badly on me."

"We just went over this. If anything happened to me, _no one would have to know you were ever involved_."

"Well, I'd feel bad about it," Jing mutters, and looks at his shoes. They're nice shoes. Not that this makes the situation any better.

"Yeah?" Wei says. "Why?"

Jing raises his left hand so he can look at it, holding it palm upwards. He wiggles his fingers. The fingers are long and pale, but they look strong. There's only a faint line of scarring across the knuckles. They're articulate hands. Hands made for fixing things, not for punching people. They would've been so much better if the fingers had never been broken during Wei's lifetime, but...

"I don't know," Jing says. "I like you."

"Fucking with my head and leaving me alive would be the worst thing you could do to me," Wei says, slowly. "Do you understand?"

"I think so," says Jing.

Wei doesn't like the uncertainty in the spirit's voice.

He also gets the distinct feeling, once again, that he's obtained access to something that's incredibly dangerous.

He pulls his coat tighter around himself. 

"We would've liked you in the Equalists," Wei murmurs. "Whenever someone wanted to leave the organisation, we could've got you to fix them. Wipe their minds squeaky clean." _Maybe plant some disinformation on them as well, in case they got interrogated by cops later._

"I wouldn't just eat memories indiscriminately," Jing says, peevish. "I'm not some kind of... Some kind of _trash incinerator_ for unwanted thoughts."

His indignation makes Wei remember something Jing said when they first met: _if Amon HAD approached us and asked us for assistance, then some of us would have been happy to oblige._

And:

_But that would have required respect on his part._

"I'm just saying..." Wei murmurs. Wait, what _was_ he saying? "...We would've liked you. You would've been venerated." And don't people always need something to venerate? (If you don't have anything to look up to, then why bother getting out of bed in the morning?)

Jing gives an amused little 'hmph', although he sounds just a bit pathetic as he says, "I guess some positive attention might've been nice for a change."

A gloomy silence settles over the two of them, and neither of them make much effort to fight it off. _Positive attention._ Now there's a concept.

Wei resumes watching the horizon. He now has a thought that won't leave him alone.

A good while passes before Jing snaps Wei out of his contemplation. "Wait. I think this is the place. Stop here."

"Why?" They're surrounded by water and darkness. There's hardly any wind. The boat engine is the only noise. Ruyi is just a distant twinkling thing on the mainland.

"The skin between the worlds is thin."

Wei decreases the throttle until the boat slows to a halt. He refuses to feel any sort of anxiety. Jing reaches into his coat pocket and takes out a handkerchief, which he ties around Wei's face.

"Wait a minute, you blew my nose in this handkerchief," Wei says, just as Jing fastens the knot.

"Really?" Jing stands there in mute horror for a moment. "...Well, it's not like anyone will be looking at it too closely out here," he murmurs, before looking at the black water. "Can you feel that?"

"Feel what? Are you asking if I can feel that you blew my fucking nose in this handkerchief?" 

"No. _That._ "

"What?"

"Look at the hair on your arms," Jing says.

Wei rolls back a sleeve. By the moonlight, he can just barely see that there's gooseflesh on his forearms.

"Yeah? It's cold. So what?" says Wei.

"You're not very sensitive, are you?" Jing grumbles. "Maybe that's why you're coping so well. Listen. Don't your ears feel strange?"

Maybe it's the power of suggestion, but now Jing mentions it, Wei does feel an odd pressure in his sinuses.

"Yeah, we're good." Jing turns away from the steering wheel and leans over the side of the boat. "Right. I have to write something inflammatory. Can I borrow some of your blood?"

"Why?"

"I need it to write with. Just a few drops. For the chi in it." Jing pauses. "Technically, there are _other_ bodily fluids I could use, but... Let's just go with blood. A teeny-tiny amount of blood. Nothing that you'd miss."

Well, whatever. Wei did say that he'd let Jing borrow some chi.

Wei pats his pockets for a sharp object. "I don't have a knife. You forgot to get me one."

Jing wrinkles his nose. "Damn. Let me think," he says, and stares into space for a few seconds. Then he announces, "Think happy thoughts!" and, before Wei can ask what he means, he brings his right hand to his mouth and sinks his teeth into the pad of his thumb.

"MOTHERFUCKER," Wei yells.

There's blood, alright. Wei never realized what sharp teeth he had. The blood wells up the crescent-shaped wound and threatens to run down Wei's arm. Still, on a (questionable) positive note, it doesn't actually hurt much. It looks more painful than it is.

"Sorry," says Jing, before holding his hand over the water and letting a few drops fall. 

The drops emanate an unearthly glow when they touch the sea, and they settle like oil. Jing reaches out and traces the blood into a few word-like squiggles with his index finger. The squiggles burn with the same blue-white light as a welding arc.

"Is that glow due to ionization or what?" Wei asks. "What is that shit, exactly?"

"I could answer that if I knew what ionization was."

"It's... Never mind. Those are words, right? You've just written some words on the sea. What do they say?"

Jing leans back to admire his handiwork, and frowns. "Well, they can have multiple interpretations."

"Like what?"

"One interpretation would be 'Vaatu can choke on my dick'. Another interpretation would be 'Vaatu can suck shit through a straw out of a humanity's collective wrinkly sphincter'. It could also be 'Vaatu is cordially invited to lick dog piss off the pavement while fucking a pigsheep,' or 'Vaatu will ultimately be vanquished by Raava because even chaos is subject to mathematical principles. For instance, if one was to create a device that generated random outcomes, then one would need to use specific algorithm in order to do so, and therefore this proves that even chaos is defined by order'." Jing clears his throat. " _However_ , I think my _favorite_ interpretation is, 'Vaatu holds no real power because there is no such thing as duality, there is only the void, AND also Vaatu can eat my asshole'."

"You wrote spirit graffiti," Wei says.

"I think it's quite good," says Jing.

Wei squints. "Who's Vaatu?"

"Someone who, um, I shouldn't be publicly disrespecting right now."

"Yeah? What makes him so great?"

"He's the spirit of disorder."

Wei thinks about this critically. "Wouldn't the spirit of disorder _enjoy_ licking dog piss and having sex with farm animals?"

"I failed to consider that. Now you mention it, it's probably quite difficult to offend him." Jing looks disappointed. "Perhaps people will be more offended by the part about how even chaos can be expressed by algorithms."

"Yeah, that bit was pretty fucking smug. So what now?" 

"We wait."

"How long for?"

"Might be a few hours. Who knows. The graffiti will increase our likelihood of attracting attention, although sea spirits tend to attack anything that gives off heat anyway. Bad memories from the war, I suppose. And you're warm-blooded, so-"

"I'm good bait."

"Precisely."

"I dunno how long I'll be warm-blooded for if I stay out here. It's freezing." Wei goes to rub his palms together for warmth, then remembers that his thumb is still bleeding. 

He goes to stick his thumb in his mouth, but Jing stops him.

Jing breathes on his hands, and numbness seeps through Wei's fingers, all the way down to his elbows. The pain in his thumb disappears completely.

"...What did you just do?" Wei asks, uneasy, even as he feels sensation quickly returning to his flesh.

"Oh," Jing says, "Didn't that feel good? Sorry, I thought I'd just-"

Wei's ears pop as if there's been a sudden change in air pressure.

" _What the fuck did you do?_ " Wei says, quieter now.

"Um, _that_ bit wasn't me..." Jing says, then shuts up.

Lights appear around the boat. The lights glow darkly. A rational person might say that a light cannot glow darkly, but these lights clearly do not give a shit about the opinions of rational people. Hell, Wei gets the sense that rationality is no longer applies to his life. Reality suddenly seems even less solid than it did previously, and that's no mean feat given that Wei has already spent far too much time seriously wondering if he's the hallucination of a talking dog.

Very slowly, very clearly, Jing says, "Wei, please open the throttle all the way. I'll steer."

Wei floors it. The boat roars forwards in a burst of sea spray and engine fumes. Wei hangs on to the steering wheel as the sea wind whips at his face. The pressure in his ears hurts now.

There is something behind them.

"OKAY, FAIR WARNING," Jing shouts over the engine noise. "DON'T LOOK BACK OVER YOUR SHOULDER."

Wei looks back over his shoulder.

He doesn't know what he's looking at, but all he can comprehend is that it's huge, and it has a lot of teeth. It's mouth is a hole in reality that's full of razors. Then it disappears back below the water, so all Wei can see is a ragged fin, as tall as he is. The fin glows with... well, not bioluminescence, because the thing that's following him isn't biological. Even the light emanating from it looks toxic. And Wei thinks, _Is this how spirits really are? Even Jing?_

"AAAUGH _I TOLD YOU_ ," Jing bellows at him.

"Seen worse," says Wei, as he tears his gaze away and blinks after-images away from his eyes. He imagines distant stars, and things that burn in icy darkness. He becomes too aware of how small and fragile he is. "Er. Is that Vaatu?" he asks.

Jing laughs raggedly. "NOT EVEN CLOSE."

The boat speeds onwards, a flimsy material thing from somewhere warm and young, pursued by something uglier and stronger from somewhere old and dark.


	11. Winter, ASC 170

Noatak slips in and out of sleep, rocked by the motion of the ship. Sometimes he opens his eyes, expecting to see someone standing over him, but there's never anyone there, and he drifts away again.

The ship's crew have the sense to leave him alone. He remains on the main deck. Despite his sickly appearance, no one suggests that he should sleep in one of the cabins. He needs to be somewhere open, with as little as possible between him and the sea.

The sea is old and indifferent, and it makes his own life seem inconsequential.

He stirs as a breeze picks up, whistling through the metalwork.

His mind wanders.

The stink of smoke from the ship's boilers nags at his awareness. _You know what they used to do with waterbenders, right?_ his father once told him. _They'd keep them deep underground, in these places that were just big metal boxes, like ovens, stuck in the earth. There'd always be fires burning. To cook 'em slow, I guess. The Fire Nation could've just killed the sorry bastards and saved everyone a lot of trouble, but they didn't. Can you guess why?_

Noatak had shook his head.

 _To prove a point,_ his father had said.

And the story had stuck with him, and had sprung to mind whenever people asked why the Equalists didn't just kill their enemies. Noatak even incorporated it into Amon's background. Why had the firebenders left him alive? To prove a point.

Noatak tries to think of something else. He's not Amon anymore. He's stuck with being Noatak again. And, at the moment, Noatak just wants a rest. Noatak doesn't need to think about fire, or the way skin tightens and splits when burned.

For some reason, he recalls a street fight he witnessed a long time ago. It was a fight between two firebenders, and the loser lost their upper lip and part of their nose. People were crowded around, shouting.

Noatak can hear people shouting right now.

He does his best to filter the shouting out. 

It takes him too long to realize that the shouting is real. He's not on a street in a distant city, repulsed by the stink of charred flesh. He's still on a ship. He can smell damp air and coal smoke. And something is wrong.

Noatak sits upright, possessed by the intent to tell everyone, very calmly and quietly, that they need to shut up before he yanks their lungs out through their throats. He's never yanked anyone's lungs out through their throats before - never had cause to try, really - but there is a first time for everything.

The shouting contains a note of panic.

Noatak's eyes adjust to the dark, and he strains his ears as he tries to compensate for his poor vision. He can't be sure, but he thinks he hears the sound of a motorboat over the noise of the wind.

The ship's crew are crowded together at the starboard bow. Some of them are pointing out to sea. A spotlight has been pointed towards the water, and the crew are just silhouettes, but Noatak can still recognize Zhu Li's profile. She looks like a startled deer, except that deer usually have the sense to run when they sense danger, not stand around and gawk like...

The medic, the one who treated Noatak's burns earlier, suddenly breaks away from the group and bolts over to the port side. The rest of the crew follow as a herd. 

Then a shadow passes beneath the spotlight, and there is the crunch and scream of tearing metal.

A shudder reverberates through the ship. They've hit something. 

Have they collided with another vessel? Struck a rock? Did a motorboat hit them? What? What the fuck could possibly go wrong now? 

Noatak is beginning to suspect that perhaps he should stay away from watercraft for the rest of his life.

He gets to his feet. He refuses to panic. He still possesses a shred of Amon's self-control, which might be the only good thing that Amon has left for him.

There is a light emanating from the water; a different light, blue and shifting, and Noatak is almost drawn towards it. But then the ship begins to list, one side pitching skywards, and instinct makes him run to the highest point of the vessel. He has to freeze the soles of his shoes to the deck so he won't skid back down towards the sea. Out the corner of his eye, he sees members of the crew clinging on to whatever they can grab, trying to keep themselves from slipping towards the sea. Noatak is the only person who can still stand upright. 

As the ship tilts, Noatak is able to make out that there's something in the water, tearing at the hull. Something very large, and very full of teeth. 

They haven't been hit by another vessel.

They've been hit by something else entirely.

Noatak has heard of sea monsters - giant eels, vast squids, all the sort of nonsense you find fascinating when you're eight years old and your father deigns to tell you about his years as a young man in the navy - but... This, whatever it is, this thing in the water, is different. It bites at the hull as if it's trying to get at something deep within he ship.

It hurts to look at the creature. The perspective of its body seems wrong, like it doesn't quite fit properly into this world. Parts of it look too spindly, though it's hard if they look that way because they're genuinely small or if they're just, somehow, further away than one might expect.

Noatak knows that the thing is a spirit. He doesn't have any other word for what it could be.

Noatak has managed to live his entire life without seeing a spirit until now. He decides that he would like to live the rest of his life without seeing a spirit ever again.

And there's another oddity close to the monstrosity: fragments of wood, turning in the churning water. Did the fragments come from another boat? Was that what Noatak heard a moment ago? And, stranger still, why is there a grappling hook over the railing of the deck? How long has that been there? Did any of the crew see it when they were crowded together on the starboard side a moment ago, or were they too busy looking at the sea monster? Was the grappling hook even there when they left the mainland? It can't have been, but why-

Then two things happen at once:

The wind whips up, carrying a stinging rain.

Something stabs Noatak in the leg.

Noatak reaches down, still staring at the spirit. His fingers close around something long and thin. He unthinkingly yanks the object out of his leg, though the ensuing pain and lightheadedness tell him this was a bad idea. 

His hand now holds a metal arrow shaft. There is his blood on it. There is also some sort of syringe mounted to the thing. It looks like a rough copy of a weapon that Future Industries tried to develop once. But they never put it into use, did they? The Equalists never used ranged weapons more complicated than bolas... Or, come to think of it, grappling hooks. 

Noatak grips the arrow and squanders precious seconds by staring at it like an idiot.

The syringe on the arrow is half-full of clear liquid.

Then the ship shakes again. The spirit worries at it like a dog with a dead animal. Waves sweep across the deck. 

Noatak forces himself to focus, and does a quick count of the crew: most of them are still clinging on for dear life, though Zhu Li has somehow managed to climb up towards the bridge and is pulling herself through a doorway.

How many people were on this ship when it left land? Noatak tries to think. Who the fuck just shot him? Should he attack the spirit or would that just make thing worse? Is the spirit after him specifically? If it's after him specifically, then why is it trying to chew its way through the hull?

 _It might be wiser to ponder these questions when you're no longer in the middle of a life-and-death situation_ , Amon might say, like an benevolent tutor addressing a dim student.

Noatak needs to get away from here.

_What, and leave the crew to the mercy of the creature?_

"Oh, fuck off," Noatak says. then reaches out with his bending to grab a crewman who is still hugging a railing on the starboard side, precariously close to the water. Noatak hauls him by his blood further up onto the deck, towards relative safety. The man only screams a little bit. Noatak is being gentle.

Then, at the edge of his vision, Noatak sees movement. A humanoid figure, though it soon disappears behind the cover of a lifeboat.

Maybe there is more than one spirit present.

Or maybe Noatak is hallucinating due to exhaustion.

Noatak thinks of ijirait.

The ship shudders again. The deck is so much closer to the waterline now.

Noatak heaves a sigh, and does a very stupid thing: he lets go of his grip on the deck, takes a short run, and dives overboard. 

He leaps the port bow so that the bulk of the ship is between him and the spirit, and lands feet-first. The world turns dark and noisy. Every raw nerve on his body screams in agony as the salt water soaks into his burns, and his only coherent thought is, I'm an idiot. It takes all of his strength to avoid panicking. 

He keeps his eyes closed, and finds the small corner of his mind that always stays as cold and quiet as the bottom of a well, and he reaches out, and lets it draw the heat from the world.

The water around the ship blossoms with ice, keeping the ship from sinking any further.

Noatak is dimly aware that, under normal circumstances, it would take multiple waterbenders in order to do a thing like this. He'd like to think that he's just exceptionally strong, but the truth is that he'll probably pay for it later.

The ice expands and solidifies erratically, as if turning to brittle glass. That'll do. Noatak doesn't need to see it; he can feel the shape and weight of it in his mind, and the way the sea flows around it. Then the movement of the water changes. The spirit - the one with the teeth, not the shadow-thing on the deck - stops tearing at the ship, and dives. 

The spirit has noticed him.

Noatak twists the water under him into a spire, and gets out of the sea before the spirit can bite his legs off. He jumps back onto the deck, landing gracelessly next to the foremost smoke stack. The impact sends a spike of pain through his knees, and he throws all dignity to the wind and lets out a good, healthy scream. 

His legs don't want to move, and he shouldn't be shivering like this. He tries to keep his teeth from chattering as he draws saltwater away from his eyes.

On a positive note, the ship no longer seems to be sinking. The water on the deck has frozen into a crop of dirty glass spikes.

Then the spirit breaks through the water's surface on the port side, cracking some of the ice around the boat. Noatak pulls the rainwater from the air and draws it into a harpoon, then hefts the weapon at one of the spirit's eyes.

The harpoon passes straight through the spirit's head and disappears into he water behind it.

 _Well,_ Noatak thinks, _I tried._

A distress flare lights the sky.

"AMON," Zhu Li screams at him from the bridge. 

Part of Noatak is sure that she means him, and part of Noatak wants to look behind him to see if there's a man in a white mask standing there.

Zhu Li shouts something else, but Noatak struggles to hear her over the wind. He catches snippets of words. "...BE HERE SOON... THROUGH HULL... FIRE ROOM WALLS... NOT SAFE... HERE?"

Noatak glances over his shoulder. The stormy sea reminds him of... Something, he can't remember what. A painting, perhaps. It occurs to him that it's very beautiful. Then he remembers that he might be dying.

"I SAID, CAN YOU PLEASE GET OVER HERE?" Zhu Li bellows with surprising fervor, then shouts something about... the casing? _Something something boiler casing_ , sounded like.

Noatak starts to make his way over to her, but he sees it again: the humanoid figure, lean and sure-footed on the tilted deck. It's watching him from the shadows. There are shadows where shadows shouldn't be.

There's something about the figure that's both familiar and alien.

He can't make his eyes focus on it. It has no face.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Zhu Li yells, loud and clear now.

Noatak sends a flurry of ice needles at the place where he thought he saw the humanoid. The needles only shatter on the deck. 

_You can't hurt things that aren't real. That's what makes them dangerous._

Then Noatak's left leg buckles.

 _Ah_ , Noatak thinks. _I got shot in the leg, didn't I? Not sure how I forgot that._ He's still holding the arrow in his hand. The syringe on it is still half-full. He wonders what's in the syringe - he used to know people who could tell him things like that - and then it occurs to him that if he doesn't get his act together, he won't live long enough to find out.

He can't hear very well. The ringing - actually, it's more like a whistle - in his ears is too loud, drowning out the sound of the wind. He has to press his hands against his knee just to keep his leg straight. He can't feel his toes.

He has to survive. There's a quiet, childish part of him that wants to wail in despair. Why should he be scared? Why should he be afraid of spirits? He was once expected to kill the most powerful person in the world. He's losing - losing blood, losing focus - and he _can't_ lose. He's meant to be better than everyone else. This isn't fair. 

He's going to-

To...

...Wait, what was he meant to be doing right now?

There's another jolt. This time it knocks him right off his feet. The spirit has resumed attacking the ship.

The ice holding the ship in place is starting to crack. It sounds like bones snapping.

Noatak's vision is darkening around the edges, but he can see Zhu Li step out from the safety of the bridge and scramble towards him. He wants to tell her that he doesn't need help. He's a waterbender. Does she know he's a waterbender? Because he's been one all along, actually. He tries to stand upright.

"THAT THING'S CHEWING ITS WAY THROUGH TO THE FIRE ROOM," Zhu Li shouts, "IF IT DAMAGES ONE OF THE BOILERS-"

Right, yes, didn't she say something about-

The deck around the smoke stack erupts.

The world goes silent, and force shoves Noatak sideways. He sees Zhu Li get knocked backwards, and then he has just enough time to register that his feet are no longer on the deck, he's falling, the air is thick with steam and smoke, and perhaps he hears the spirit scream in pain or triumph, and that the sea fast approaches, and the last sensible thought that crosses his mind is, _That's it, I am never travelling aboard anything larger than a canoe ever again_.

As time slows, he instinctively reaches out towards the sea, to soften the impact when he lands.

Directly beneath him is a circle of water that is still and dark as a millpond, even as the sea around it churns. The circle of dark water does not react. It's dead to him.

He lands, but there is no splash.

\--

There is, however, the white noise of the wind and waves.

\--

Then Noatak loses all sense of the sea, as if it's just vanished.

\--

The boat and the sea monster were just a bad dream, and he needs to wake up, or-

\--

Noatak's chin cracks against wooden floorboards. He spits out a mouthful of blood and hauls himself upright. 

A crowd roars. 

Noatak spins around to face it. 

He's on a stage. The stage has a painted backdrop that depicts the sea at night. There's no one in the audience. The roar of the crowd stops. 

There are only rows of empty chairs beneath a starless sky.

No, that's not true. The audience isn't entirely empty. One chair is occupied. There is something there.

The something is holding a clipboard.

If it's holding a clipboard, then that implies that it has hands, and Noatak's brain tries to fill in the rest from there. The _something_ has hands, therefore it has arms, and legs, so it must be humanoid.

He actually tries to count the hands for a moment. He thinks he counts two. Two hands make sense. He then decides that the something looks like a person made of smoke, as that's a concept that's easy to comprehend. Smoke and falling snow, or ash. 

There is a megaphone next to its chair, and also a lever.

"And you're supposed to be the bloodbender, I take it?" the thing says. Noatak gets a vague impression of blue eyes and little white teeth. Its voice sounds familiar.

"Wha-" says Noatak.

"No, NO," the thing squeals, coquettishly holding the clipboard over the space where Noatak wants its face to be. "You're not what he wants AT ALL. You're meant to be CHARISMATIC. You're meant to be MENACING. You're meant to be a CRIMINAL MASTERMIND. You're meant to be a SCHEMING PUPPETMASTER with influence over DARK FORCES. But... You? You look like you'd aspire to live in a dumpster even though in a dumpster would be too upmarket for you. Quite frankly, your performance was _pathetic_. You're just some scrub with a gimmick. I... I honestly can't imagine you fighting the Avatar. I can't imagine you fighting your way out of a wet paper bag. You're terrible. Just terrible. "

Noatak is dead, and this is the underworld. He's not sure if this is better or worse than he expected.

"But-" says Noatak.

"And you're also rude," the thing growls. 

Noatak feels the growl through his feet, as if there's machinery under the stage and a throttle has just opened somewhere. Impressions flash through his mind: smoke, fire, metal, offal. Is this place a theatre or a rendering plant?

The thing rests its clipboard on its lap, and steeples its fingers. "In all seriousness, you shouldn't have claimed to speak for us. We're not things that you can use when it suits your agenda. And you have to realize: there's no place in the world for creatures like you anymore. I know your kind. Perhaps I know your kind a little too well. Everything is just a commodity to you. Minds, bodies, souls, ideas. There's nothing you wouldn't weaponize."

"I don't-" says Noatak.

The thing now makes a shushing gesture. "I guess I could say that we're not so different, you and I... But, let's be real here, _I_ don't have to _lie_ to anyone. Come to think of it, I haven't lied to him _once_."

"Who are you talking ab-" Noatak tries, because the thing isn't letting him get a word in edgeways.

"Don't call us, we'll call you," the thing says, and it pulls the lever next to its seat, just as Noatak realizes that its voice sounded familiar because it was his own (and this doesn't surprise him in the least, and actually seems like a bit of a cliché).

 _That lever had better not open a fucking trapdoor under me_ , Noatak thinks, right before it becomes apparent that the leaver does, in fact, open a fucking trapdoor.

Noatak falls.

\--

Noatak's chin cracks against wooden floorboards. He spits out a mouthful of blood and hauls himself upright.

He fights back a wave of nausea. There's a mass of human bodies to his left. Living, breathing, screaming humans, united by a common interest. Something cold and wet hits Noatak in the face, making him stagger back. The crowd is restless. They're throwing things.

When Noatak looks up, he finds himself facing a figure in a white mask. This is his chance. One fair fight. (None of this is fair at all.)

Noatak reaches out with his bloodbending to make a grab for the figure, to no effect. It has no substance.

This isn't real.

And then Amon darts behind Noatak and kicks his legs out from under him, and Noatak feels Amon's hand against back of his neck.

Everyone is watching.

Noatak falls.

\--

Noatak's chin cracks against wooden floorboards. He spits out a mouthful of blood and hauls himself upright.

He's in a hallway.

The Avatar stands across from him, still wearing a stolen chi blocker uniform. She's smiling. The idea that he could threaten her in any way is completely absurd. She's ten thousand years old. Does he really think that bloodbending would be any sort of defense against her? After all, it didn't exactly help his father much, did it?

She raises her fists.

Noatak doesn't have to look over his shoulder in order to know that there's a window behind him.

\--

Noatak's chin cracks against wooden floorboards. He spits out a mouthful of blood and hauls himself upright.

He's back on the stage, facing the white mask once more. The crowd screams and howls. On some level, this is exactly what he's always expected.

He still tries to fight. Surrendering would be unacceptable, although he's just not fast enough, just not smart enough. He shuts his eyes the moment Amon touches him.

\--

Noatak's chin cracks against wooden floorboards. He spits out a mouthful of blood and _would_ haul himself upright if he could, but he can't move.

He can't move.

He lies there and listens to his own heartbeat. (And if none of this is real, then why does he still have a heartbeat?)

Footsteps draw close. Someone rolls him onto his back with their boot.

And he hears his Lieutenant say, "You? _You're_ him?"

Noatak is sure it's the Lieutenant, and he knows this immediately, even before he risks looking up. And even when he _does_ look up, he's still sure it's him, despite the fact that the Lieutenant has lost his moustache and seems... different, somehow. Healthier, maybe. Slightly less pale. Not so weathered. A more attractive younger brother of a man Noatak once knew.

The Lieutenant's clothes (expensive clothes, though dishevelled) are soaking wet, and his hair is slicked back against his skull. He puts Noatak in mind of some sort of scavenger bird that's just had its head in a corpse's viscera: sombre, slippery, sharp. In fact, Noatak can imagine the Lieutenant sticking his head in a corpse's viscera just a little too easily. It certainly adds a new dimension to the expression 'all up in them guts', which is already _such_ a charming turn of phrase, and for fuck's sake, why does Noatak have this horrible suspicion that a former lover (alright, Amon's former lover) is about to eat his innards.

It occurs to him that this man might not entirely be the Lieutenant anymore.

The Lieutenant crouches by his Noatak's, and studies him. His expression is unreadable. He grabs Noatak's hair so he can lift his head.

Then his Lieutenant murmurs, "You? Seriously?"

_You're not what he wants AT ALL._

"Say something," the Lieutenant asks. His disappointment is evident in his voice. Noatak has such a knack for disappointing people.

Noatak briefly considers feigning confusion and pretending to be someone else, but then abandons the idea. He doesn't know where he is, but it doesn't seem like a place that's particularly forgiving of liars.

He's on a stage. The stage has red pillars, and it overlooks a courtyard. He's not sure if it's the same stage where he saw last Amon. He looks past the Lieutenant to the courtyard beyond the stage's curtains. What if Amon comes back?

The Lieutenant gives Noatak's head a shake. "Hey."

And because Noatak is Noatak, the only thing he can say is, "Were you expecting someone taller?"

His Lieutenant lets go of Noatak's hair, letting his head knock against the floor. The pain of impact comes as a shock. Perhaps Noatak hoped that his immobility meant that he wouldn't be able to feel anything.

The Lieutenant wipes his hands on the leg of his pants before standing up and walking a few paces away. 

Noatak takes deep breaths, and wills his body to move. He needs to get out of here.

The Lieutenant remains quiet for a while. He keeps his back to him.

Then the Lieutenant announces, "Holy fuck. _You?_ You were Amon?"

Noatak would shrug if he could.

The Lieutenant walks towards him again, so his boots are now precariously close to Noatak's head. Noatak grits his teeth and keeps his tongue dead center in his mouth so he won't accidentally bite it if (or _when_ ) the Lieutenant gets violent.

"You could've at least been..." his Lieutenant trails off. "For fuck's sake, _look_ at you."

Yes, well.

The Lieutenant is being surprisingly calm about all this. Noatak just looks at the Lieutenant's boots. He thinks of all the delicate bones in the human face.

"What happened to you?" his Lieutenant asks.

Noatak licks his lips. He finds his voice - his own voice, not Amon's. "After everything I've done, will you believe anything I say?"

His Lieutenant places his heel on Noatak's left elbow ( _ah, so that's how he'll start things_ ), and quietly repeats, "Answer the question."

"By this point, would my answer make a difference?" Noatak asks.

He doesn't know if he'll scream or not when the Lieutenant breaks his arm. Noatak doesn't have much reason to be stoic anymore. No one's going to say, _Noatak was a vile person, but at least he met his fate with dignity_. Noatak might as well cry and beg. Perhaps he should actively _try_ to disappoint people as much as possible. One final act of spite.

But no pain comes. The Lieutenant removes his heel from Noatak's elbow, then says, "Oh. Huh. I get it. You don't think there's anything I can threaten you with. You think you got nothing left to lose, right?"

Noatak doesn't reply to that.

His Lieutenant crouches again, and methodically unbuttons Noatak's upper layers of clothing so he can remove them. His movements are unhurried, almost gentle. Then he rolls Noatak over onto his stomach. He tugs at Noatak's bandages. Noatak grits his teeth and hold his breath as scabs are peeled away with the fabric.

"Looks like someone only did half a job," the Lieutenant mutters.

The Lieutenant digs a fingertip into a burn. It feels like he's trying to bore into Noatak's flesh.

Noatak still tries to keep silent, although he doesn't know why he's bothering.

"What happened to you?" the Lieutenant repeats.

Noatak lets his eyes unfocus so he doesn't have to look at anything. If he closes his eyes completely, it might just increase his awareness of any pain he's about to receive. "Does it matter when you're going to kill me anyway?"

The Lieutenant lapses into one of his silences. Then he chortles, and sits by Noatak's side. "I'm gonna do worse than kill you," he says,. "I'm gonna talk about my _feelings_."

 _Fuck_ , thinks Noatak.

"You know, before I met you, there was this little window in my life where I could've been happy." the Lieutenant says, still entirely too calm about everything. "I had a little routine going: get home from work, drink something, jerk off, fall asleep. And I mean yeah, I thought I was bored, but... I had a shorter list of things to regret back then."

 _That's nice_ , Noatak thinks. _Please kill me_.

Almost as an afterthought, the Lieutenant pulls Noatak's shirt back over his shoulders, covering him up.

"I always suspected you didn't love me, but I could tolerate that," the Lieutenant continues. "Always knew you thought I was kind of a fuckwit, too. And I figured out a long time ago that you weren't honest. But I still didn't think you'd..."

The Lieutenant takes Noatak's right hand, and examines it thoroughly, gently bending the fingers back a little. Noatak wishes he'd snapped the Lieutenant's neck when he had the chance.

The Lieutenant then closes Noatak's fingers into a fist, and rests Noatak's hand on the floor. "And... You know what? You know how many cheap, shitty jokes people made about the two of us? I spent years wanting to prove that we weren't - or, fuck it, _I_ wasn't, because I was usually came off worse for this stuff - a punchline to people's bullshit. I wanted to prove that my loyalty meant something. But I couldn't. And I still stuck with you. And you knew why. Hell, I must've made things too easy for you, huh?"

Noatak is reminded of the parable about the frog and the scorpion. The Lieutenant has always been the sort of man who seems to want some sort of reward for being the most long-suffering asshole in the universe.

The Lieutenant adds: "The funny thing is, if you'd told me you were a waterbender years ago, I might've even forgiven you."

"That's not true," Noatak murmurs, as gently as possible.

The Lieutenant falls silent.

"There were a lot of things that you forgave me for, but you wouldn't have forgiven me for that," Noatak says."You would've hated that my powers depended on an inherent ability. You accepted Amon because Amon represented a possibility. In theory, Amon could've been imitated. But you couldn't imitate a bloodbender. The envy would've driven you mad."

The Lieutenant adopts that blank expression again.

Then the Lieutenant leans back a little, takes a deep breath, and rubs his chin. "Envy? Huh."

Noatak knows that 'envy' seems like such a lazy, childish accusation. It's become a cliché by now: _'The nonbenders are just angry because we can do things they can't. They figure that if they can't have something, neither should anyone else.'_ Yet, in the Lieutenant's case, it's true. It’s always been true. And Noatak knows this.

Noatak still waits for the inevitable bout of anger.

But the Lieutenant just shrugs, before clearing his throat. He straightens his posture and lifts his chin a little. "No one wants to be weak and useless..." He pauses. "Alright, let me rephrase that, and start over. No one wants to be _weak_. No one's ever useless. Everyone can be useful for something. But if you're weak, you don't get to choose what you're used for, and you're gonna get used for something that hurts."

Noatak doesn't know what to say other than, "I'm sorry." He isn't sure if it's an admission of guilt, or just a general statement of sympathy. _I'm sorry for your loss. I'm sorry things turned out like this. I'm sorry you feel this way._ Good grief, Noatak needs to shut the fuck up.

"Yeah, people are always sorry when they get caught. Lemme finish," the Lieutenant says. "I get to live in a world that likes to tell me, in thousand shitty little ways, that I'm disposable, and yet it's _my_ problem if _I_ feel envy? What's so bad about envy, anyhow? People only treat it as bad 'cos they feel threatened by it." He gives Noatak a thoughtful look, like he's wondering if his vital organs would be better fried or roasted. "I'm all for envy, me."

Noatak would like to inch away from him. Or, failing that, give him a fatal pulmonary embolism. Something quick and painless. He might actually be doing the world a favor by removing the Lieutenant from it.

"And I bet you're now wishing you'd thrown me harder at that wall, huh?" the Lieutenant says, showing an unusual bit of insight. His then composure crumples, and he puts his head in his hands. "Why was I surprised you did that?"

The Lieutenant now looks more like his old self again. This is almost a relief. He seems so much less malicious when he's miserable. Noatak could even believe that the man's vulnerability makes him less of a threat. There were so many times in the past where it was easy to reassure him with a touch, or a kind word, or even just a moment of attention.

Noatak wonders how much longer he might live if he could sit upright and put his arms around the poor stupid asshole.

"I'm a fucking idiot," the Lieutenant says.

"What, because I had you fooled?" Noatak makes an effort to speak carefully and quietly. "You weren't alone in that regard. Don't feel stupid. I just have an aptitude for identifying people's weaknesses. In fact, sometimes, people's weaknesses are all I see, which might explain why I'm a..." He searches for the right choice of words, "...Massive bastard."

Noatak then realizes what he's just said.

 _Ah,_ he thinks, _here we are. I'm reasonably sure that this conversation isn't actually happening, I don't know where I am, I'm willing to entertain the idea that you're a figment of my guilty conscience, and I'm genuinely scared because I think you're about to torture me, and... For some strange reason, I am still trying to comfort you. My penchant for charity cases is getting out of hand._ He is strangely reminded of a time when Tarrlok once tried to rehabilitate a rabbit with a broken leg. The rabbit died anyway. Tarrlok would've saved himself a lot of trouble if he'd just let the rabbit be used as a stew ingredient.

"No, I'm a fucking idiot because I should've expected all of this," the Lieutenant says. "Whether you were a nonbender, a waterbender, whatever... You'd always been ruthless. It's been right there in front of me the whole time."

And now the guy is crying. While sober. He still has his head in his hands so Noatak can't see his face, but there's a tremor in his voice, and Noatak knows him well enough by now to tell when he's ineptly trying to hide the fact that he's in pain. 

The afterlife is so much worse than Noatak expected.

"I could've put two and two together and worked out people don't mean anything to you, and I wasn't gonna be the exception to that," the Lieutenant says. "Fuck me, I don't even know why I'm talking to you. I hate this shit. I said I wouldn't do this. I said I was just gonna kill you."

"Want to get things over with, then?" Noatak asks. His mouth is dry. _Get things over with, then move on._ In this version of the story, the frog gets to kill the scorpion.

"Give me a moment. I don't know," his Lieutenant murmurs.

That makes two of them. Noatak still isn't sure why the Lieutenant hasn't caused him any physical harm yet.

_You do remember that, back at the Arena, he ran at you without bothering to arm his kali sticks first, right?_

_Yes, but I assumed that was because he'd forgot. You know what he's like._

Noatak stares at the ceiling. There are rigging mechanisms right above him, half-hidden in the darkness. A... A what do you call it? A fly loft. There are line sets for lighting. Electricity and metal. If someone had an appreciation for black comedy, they could drop a sandbag on Noatak's head, which certainly seems a lot more preferable to an eternity of lying on the floor while the Lieutenant cries at him.

Then his Lieutenant takes a deep breath. "H'okay. I'm fine." He wipes his nose on the back of his wrist, blinks a few times, then sits bolt upright, and seems to compose himself somewhat.

"You said you were sorry," his Lieutenant says. He now sounds exhausted, but still calm.

Noatak _did_ say that.

"Sorry for what?" his Lieutenant asks.

_Why isn't he resorting to violence yet?_

"If we'd won, neither of us would've regretted a single thing we'd done to achieve that victory," the Lieutenant says. "You could've killed me - and hell, you probably would've _had_ to kill me after I caught you bloodbending - and so long as you got to defeat the Avatar, I reckon you wouldn't have given a shit. You're only giving me this 'oh boo hoo I'm a massive bastard' bullshit' because you've lost."

The Lieutenant looks around the stage. For just a second, he seems to focus on something that's outside Noatak's field of vision, and Noatak suddenly understands that they're being watched. They're on a stage, and they're being watched. Makes perfect sense. Then the Lieutenant continues:

"I'm not gonna pretend I haven't had moments of weakness. There were plenty of times when I've thought, 'fuck, maybe we shouldn't have done that'. And there were plenty of times when I questioned the sanity of our cause. But I would never, ever try to apologize for anything." His voice remains dangerously calm. "People like us don't get to apologize. An apology is an insult."

Noatak almost says, 'I don't regret my ambitions. I regret some of the things I did to achieve those ambitions,' right before he realizes that this doesn't mean anything, and never did.

Noatak screws his eyes shut. He's had enough.

He hears the scuff of boots against floorboards as the Lieutenant stands up again. 

"This situation is kinda like a test of character, ain't it?" the Lieutenant muses. "I can kill you and move on. Or... I can let you suffer. And no one else is gonna know what I choose other than you, me, and the other guy."

So there is a third person here.

"Well, I already know what sort of person I am," the Lieutenant says. "And I've been thinking: I reckon you might be worth more alive. People are gonna want you to tell them lots of shit about the Equalists. And I bet you'd fucking love being interrogated by the authorities, right? You'd finally get the audience you deserve."

Wait.

Noatak looks up and cranes his neck. "What?"

"Like I said, everyone's useful for something." There's a fleeting expression of sadness, and then the Lieutenant forces a smile. "You know, it's funny. I quit drinking because of you. And smoking. Shit, I was even a vegetarian for six months. So... Thanks, I guess? What's your name again? Noatak, right?" It's the worst smile that Noatak has seen. "Hello, Noatak."

The Lieutenant raises his boot over Noatak's head.

"Goodbye, Noatak."

The stage dims.

\--

Noatak stands on the stage once more, in front of an audience, thousands of eyes in the dark. The air is sticky and warm. The audience bays and screams. It almost sounds human.

A pair of chi blockers (he thinks they're chi blockers, as their faces are covered) let go of his wrists and step back from him, giving him some space.

There is the figure in a white mask again. It waits, only a few paces away from him, as if it would like to savor his misery for a little longer.

"You're not real," Noatak says.

The masked figure cants its head to one side, so the shadows make it appear to smile.

"You're not real," Noatak repeats, "You're not real."

The figure keeps its hands by its sides. It doesn't even bother to assume a proper combat stance. Noatak doesn't pose any threat to it. Everything is bloodless here.

Noatak isn't going to take this anymore. He turns and runs.

\--

There's snow underfoot. Noatak stumbles across it, limping badly. He looks back, but all he can see is grey. The wind tears at his skin and stings his eyes. He's lost. There is something out there, and it hear it growling. Maybe the wolves remember him from long ago.

Through the blizzard, he can make out a the shape of something ahead. A lean shadow, built for speed. An eyeless head, fleshless and vulpine, nothing more than a pair of long, narrow jaws full of things like meathooks. There's a miasma of smoke around its mouth.

Noatak comes to a dead stop so he can get a better look. The papery snow gets in his eyes.

The creature is no longer there, if it ever was. Instead, there is only the silhouette of a lone female figure. Square-shouldered. Not particularly tall. Very, _very_ familiar. He can't make out her face, but he knows she's looking directly at him.

Noatak turns around and, stupidly, runs back in the direction he came from.

\--

And then he's back on the stage again, which had better not be a fucking metaphor for anything, because Noatak is dying and he doesn't want to deal with fucking metaphors during his final moments. 

The audience surges at him in one movement. It has no faces, but many hands. The hands pin his wrists behind his back, and tear at his clothes, and when they reach bare skin, they keep tearing, trying to get at something deep inside him. There is a particular thing they're after.

When they're done, he's too weak to move. Parts of him are missing. He can't see the missing parts, but he can feel their absence.

The crowd parts, allowing Amon to pass through and approach. Amon carries a fuel can.

Noatak starts to scream.

_You weren't like this. We didn't do this to people. You weren't meant to be like this._

And Amon replies:

_So? Does that change anything? Do you think we will be remembered for our mercy and restraint?_

Noatak is still able to close his eyes, so he does that. The fuel is cold against his skin.

He wants to go home.

He hears the match being struck.

He stops being

\--

"Noatak?"

Noatak opens his eyes again and discovers that he's being stared at.

"You looked like you was having a nightmare," Tarrlok says.

Noatak gently pushes his brother away, and sits bolt upright up in bed so he can brush his damp hair back from his forehead.

There's just enough moonlight for him to make an inventory of his surroundings. Those are his boots by his bedroll. That's his half-finished carving of a sled dog in the corner. That's his slate leaning against the wall, ready for his appointment with the writing tutor tomorrow. There is Tarrlok's collection of feathers and Interesting Rocks. There is a wooden flute on the floor that's in danger of getting stepped on (probably by Tarrlok). Noatak was given the flute by his mother when he turned eight last week. He should move the flute to somewhere safe (tomorrow, not right now).

Tomorrow. There will be a tomorrow. And this doesn't seem like a bad thing.

"I'm okay," Noatak says. Relief floods through him. He doesn't know what he was just dreaming about, but he wants to cry.

Tarrlok just keeps staring. "Noatak."

"What?" Noatak says.

"Your nose is bleeding," Tarrlok says.

Noatak wipes his upper lip, and finds blood on his fingers.

"Don't tell anybody," Noatak says. The nosebleed is his fault, somehow. The blood is sticky and dark.

Noatak then looks back at his younger brother and, for some reason, he expects him to say something horrible. He doesn't know what Tarrlok could say, only that it might be something bad, and true. 

But Tarrlok just mutters, "Okay, don't get nose blood on me, good night," and cocoons himself in a blanket near Noatak's feet.

Noatak settles back down. He wants to get a good sleep so he isn't tired during his writing lesson tomorrow. His tutor says he's clever. His tutor says he's eloquent. 

 

\--

Noatak wakes up on a shore again, and coughs until his vision darkens. 

When the coughing finally passes, he wipes his face. There's fresh blood on his mouth and chin, and he can taste metal. Perhaps he bit his tongue.

He sits up so he can look for Tarrlok, without really knowing why, then drags himself out of the water before lying back down. He waits for things to change once more. This is all temporary. It will pass. 

He can still feel the weight of the sea close by. The water is still alive to him, though he doesn't know why this matters. He can still bend. Of course. What else was he expecting? Why would he think something has been lost?

He waits.

It seems odd that the salt water doesn't hurt.

The tide withdraws.

The blood around his mouth begins to dry.

He still waits.

The world doesn't change. He suspects that he's stuck here. There are no new horrors, only the same ones as before.

He remembers, distantly, that just for a short time, he really did think that everything was fine, and that he was safe, and that he had a writing lesson tomorrow.

He curls up on the ground, and covers his face.


	12. Winter, ASC 170

...

There is the rumble of hidden machinery, and the whisper of a curtain going up.

Wei finds himself alone on an empty stage once more. 

The backdrop shows a stony beach and a calm sea. 

The stage looks more dilapidated than he remembers. Some of pillars are peeling, while others are gaudy with fresh paint that's been slapped on in a bad attempt to cover some fire damage. The sky above the courtyard is no longer black, but an eggshell blue, the sort of sky you'd see early in the morning. It's the sort of sky that tells you the night is over, and you've survived another day.

There's no sun, though.

Wei blinks a few sparks from his vision. 

He's back in the spirit world, right?

He asks himself, _what's the last thing I remember?_ He's had a lot of practice at asking this question. He's had even more practice at finding himself in strange places, although maybe the spirit world doesn't look so strange by this point. If anything, there's something pleasantly familiar about it now.

And what does Wei remember?

He remembers fire and pain, although the pain wasn't his.

Wei then knows, instinctively, the bloodbender has gone, banished back to the physical world where all the other bad things are. Wei should be pleased with this, although an echo of the guy's screaming lingers in his mind. The sound evokes images, fractured and shifting: another stage, much like this one. An audience of shapeless things. A figure in a mask. A can of gasoline. The flare of a match. Some of it is difficult to comprehend: a man was ripped open, and curious hands reached inside him and tore out what they needed, and it was an act of violation, but the guy was a fucking asshole, so what does it matter? 

What does it matter if you suspect you've crossed a line somewhere?

Besides, it's like Wei told Jing: everyone ends up crossing a line eventually. Sometimes you don't even know where the lines are. And anyway, Wei wasn't the one who was hurting the bloodbender, was he? No, that was Jing. Jing was the one who made the guy scream like that. 

Anyway. Right. Jing.

Where is Jing, for that matter?

Wei struggles to focus. The sparks in his vision are fading slowly. They look very different to the usual stuff you see whenever you're hungover or concussed; there's a filigree intricacy to them, and they seem to move with purpose, even though Wei has no idea what the fuck that purpose might be. The sparks make odd little patterns. He thinks he's seen them before somewhere.

"Jing?" Wei says. Despite the roughness of his voice, the name still sounds like a struck bell.

No one answers.

Wei looks around, searching.

There is a door across the courtyard with a sign above it that says 'EXIT'. Wei should go to it. But if he leaves this place, then where will he end up? Back in the physical world? Because that prospect doesn't hold a lot of appeal. He's tired. He's alone. His joints ache. He's a wanted man. There's nothing out there for him, apart from the tenuous hope of finding the other Equalists again. And then what? What would he say to them? 

'Sorry', maybe. That might be the only thing he could offer in his current state.

Wei's gaze settles on the peeling paint on the stage's pillars. The whole place has a pervading air of decrepitude.

Wei decide that he'd like to stay here a while.

He sits down, exhausted.

As he crouches, it dawns on him that there is an object in his left hand. The object is a mask. 

An unpainted mask.

This should surprise him, yet doesn't. There's something organic about the mask's presence, like it's been there the whole time and he's just forgotten about it.

He's pretty sure he's had some part in making it. The thing is unfinished, so it doesn't really have any human features other than eyes, yet the pale wood still gleams as if it's been polished.

Wei stares dumbly at the mask. He makes an attempt to think rationally. This is the spirit world, right? So what is the mask meant to be? Is it a physical thing? Or is it more... local? Is it just some fucked-up metaphoric hallucination shit? Is it a bit of bullshit symbolism for how he's still mad about everything? Because he doesn't need any symbolism to know that.

Maybe he should put the mask down, but he doesn't want to. It seems childish, but the weight of it in his hand is oddly comforting.

"Jing?" Wei repeats, quieter. He's alarmed by how lost he sounds.

There's still no response.

Wei then remembers that Jing said when they first met: "Once I'm done with Amon, I'll leave."

Great. Has the little fucker gone and ditched Wei now he's dealt with the bloodbender? Probably. It looks that way.

Wei isn't so deluded that he thinks of Jing as a friend, but he still gets blindsided by a wave of disappointment.

Wei turns the mask over in his hands as if it can offer a reasonable explanation for everything.

There was a time when he'd held Amon's mask the same way, just once. The guy had gone for a wash, and he'd left the mask with his clothes in front of the grubby paper screen that provided a degree of privacy, and Wei's curiosity had got the better of him. 

Wei been racked with guilt as soon as he'd touched the thing, although that hadn't stopped him from holding it up, face outwards, and peering through the eyeholes. The man behind the screen must have known what Wei was doing, yet didn't comment. 

Amon's mask had been much more delicate than expected, almost fragile.

The mask that Wei currently holds is heavier, and not as defined. And as Wei examines it, he realizes something funny about the whole mess with the bloodbender: 

It feels a lot like Amon was an actual person who died.

One day the guy is a reliable constant in Wei's life, then next... Welp, he's gone. And how are you meant to grieve for someone who wasn't real?

A lot of it had felt real, though. Amon's background had seemed credible; plenty of people had lost things to firebenders, and plenty of people wanted retribution. And whenever Amon spoke, the conviction in his voice had seemed genuine, as had his sympathy. You don't gain a following by being an asshole. You gain a following by giving people what they want, which is usually purpose, and also, perhaps, _kindness_ : methodically rationed out because of its scarcity. 

The kindness was probably the worst thing.

And Wei had been complicit in it. Hell, he'd learned a trick or two. If you wanted loyalty, you looked for vulnerability. And how many times had Wei taken one of the chi blockers aside (and they were all just _kids_ ) to ask them how they were doing or if they needed anything, and noticed the way that their eyes had lit up as they'd focused their complete attention on him? And it had been disconcerting at first, and then it had flattered his ego, and then he had been able to convince himself that it was _leadership_ instead of something uglier (had the bloodbender ever convinced himself of the same thing?), and... 

Wei snaps out of his little spiral of misery. Shit. Wait. Where are the chi blockers right now? Where is anyone right now?

He sits bolt upright.

How long has it been since he last saw the others? 

How long has it been since he last _thought_ about the others?

Why hasn't he thought about them?

"Fuck," he announces. Maybe he has to get back to the physical world. The other Equalists might hate him, and half of them have probably murdered the other half by now, but they're still his responsibility. He's not like the bloodbender. He doesn't abandon people when they become inconvenient. Wei is a lot of things, but he is not like the bloodbender.

He manages to stand on aching legs. He vaguely remembers Jing warning him about anemia, and he tries to muster some resentment towards the spirit. Where has Jing gone, anyway? Wei has a bone to pick with the guy.

He grips the mask tightly as he looks at the door marked 'exit'. He weighs up his odds. They're not good. In his current state, he's useless. He needs help.

It occurs to him to pat his pockets. 

His pockets contain: a small wad of Yuan bills, a box of matches, a pair of spectacles, and a notebook.

Wei spends far too long staring at the box of matches. Much like the mask, he's sure he didn't have them on his person when he was back at... What's the name of the place? Ruyi. Back in the physical world. And there's no branding on the match box, just a plain red rectangle.

He compares the matches to the notebook, which is definitely a physical thing. The notebook feels more... credible, somehow. The matchbox has a weight to it that he'd expect, and its surface has a texture that he'd expect, but there's something _off_ about it. The box makes him think of a stage prop. It's just a very realistic stage prop. Kind of like the mask, really, except that the mask isn't pretending to be anything other than a prop. The mask is as obviously prop-like as you can get.

The act of comparing the items begins to give him a headache, so he puts the matches back in his pocket and opens up the notebook.

Sure enough, the first page contains Jing's immaculate handwriting:

_Hi,_

_The door at the edge of the courtyard opens to a small village on the South-East coast of the Earth Kingdom. Hopefully the money I've left you will be enough to tide you over for a while. When you return to the physical world, you will need to rest for a few weeks._

_The bloodbender is still alive, as requested, although I suspect that he will not remain that way for very long. In the event that he is caught by your human authorities, I have ensured that he will not be able to provide coherent information. His mind wasn't particularly cohesive even before I got to him._

_If you need anything from me, please pour a small bowl of your own blood into a pool of water no less than a hand's length in diameter, and call my name. For best results, please do so during a full moon. It would also be appreciated if you brought some fried tofu, ideally the kind with a natto filling._

_I wish you all the best, and I am deeply thankful that you allowed me the temporary use of your body. It was a very valuable learning experience._

_Regards,_

_A humble scholar._

_PS wear the glasses or you'll get headaches._

Wei checks the other pages, but that's all there is.

Wei spends a few minutes trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Jing is the sort of guy who's willing to leave polite little notes when Jing is also the sort of guy who is capable of making grown men scream like... Well, like the bloodbender screamed. But maybe there's no dissonance in this. When Wei was much younger, he used to spend a lot of time around some pretty ruthless people, and the high-ranking ones were unfailingly polite. And they were always generous too, if they wanted something from you.

Wei takes out the wad of cash so he can stare at it - like the notebook, it feels physical - then puts it back in his pocket. He still doesn't know why Jing has been so benevolent towards him.

He and Jing need to have words. And Wei isn't willing to wait around bother with pouring a bowl of blood into a puddle, either.

Wei glances down at the mask again. Amon was meant to be savvy about spirit nonsense. Funny. 

Amon never told him how to deal with a situation like this.

Then again, why the fuck would Amon have bothered to educate anyone about the spirits? If people knew how spirit stuff worked, they would've figured out just how full of crap the guy was.

Wei curls his fingers in the eye holes of the mask.

It's amazing how much a guy can just bullshit his way through things if he puts his mind to it.

Wei is going to do a better job of dealing with the spirit world than the bloodbender ever did.

He takes stock of what he already knows. This place doesn't work like the physical world, right? Time and distance are all fucky here. You're meant to navigate everything using... willpower or whatever. The whole place is like one big dream, albeit with nicer scenery than the shit Wei usually dreams about. So, maybe...

Wei hops off the stage, and marches around the perimeter of the courtyard. The back of the stage is flush with the courtyard wall, so the exit door in the wall opposite seems like the only way out.

Wei then inspects the stage again. All theaters have a backstage.

He heads over to the backdrop, the one that shows a nice calm sea. Wei peers behind it.

He almost expects to see something unspeakably horrible lurking behind there, or maybe just a small fox-dog creature that'll look up and say, "Yo." But there's nothing, just an empty space in front of a plain wooden wall, which is weird. There should be at least one door here, because that's just how stages are built. The actors need to enter out of sight. 

Why? 

So the audience can maintain their suspension of disbelief. Because everything is an illusion, right?

Wei should know a bit about illusions by now. He knows that you always see what you want to see.

He decides that he would like to see a door. Another door. A door that leads out of here and will take him to wherever Jing is.

Wei's imagination isn't too bad. When you've spent most of your life doing some pretty boring shit (washing dishes, cleaning floors, sitting in cells, waiting in tunnels, that sort of thing) maybe you develop a good imagination as a consolation prize. Wei can picture the grain of wood on the door, the size of the handle, the color of it. It's a gray-brown wood, cheap and flimsy, nothing too ambitious.

He's not sure what he expects to happen, but the door fails to materialize.

Wei could feel stupid, but he's had enough of that lately. He persists. It doesn't make any sense for there to not be a door at the back of the stage. The actors have to enter from somewhere. So there must be a door. The existence of a door is non-negotiable. Wei has believed in a lot of bullshit things during his lifetime, so the least he can do is believe that there's a door here.

It occurs to him that maybe if he can't see a door, it must be hidden. Yeah, that's plausible. And plausibility matters here.

Wei reaches out to rap his knuckles against the wood.

A bead of sweat runs into his left eye.

When his knuckles tap the wood, they push the wood outwards. Three of the panels swing back on an discrete hinge.

"Fuck me sideways," Wei says, shivering, wide-eyed, and (for the first time in a while) slightly frightened. It shouldn't have been so easy. Nothing, nothing on this shithole world, is meant to be that easy.

The door opens to reveal a long chamber, somewhere dark and underground. 

A warm draft of air heavy with coal smoke spills out. 

Wei is a hundred percent sure that he shouldn't step through the doorway, and yet he steps into it anyway: partly out of curiosity, partly out of determination to find Jing, and partly because his sense of self-preservation is notoriously terrible.

He ends up in a chamber lined with pipes and incomprehensible valves.

The place on the other side of the door feels like, well... How Wei might imagine the bowels of a ship. One of those big Fire Nation steamers, maybe. Something old and grubby. Ducting snakes down the corridor and over the walls, and there's a humming coming from somewhere. 

The place can't be part of a ship, though. Not a real ship, at least. Because, as Wei walks further down, he sees that some nutcase has written on the walls in another language Wei doesn't understand, and the words are gouged deeply into the metalwork.

You'd need some pretty heavy tools to make marks like that in metal.

Or claws.

Really big fuck-off claws.

Wei looks back over his shoulder. He is now having second thoughts about trying to find Jing.

However, the gouges on the walls still catch his curiosity. He could ask himself: if I don't know the language, then how do I know that the gouges are meant to be words? But he knows. Somehow. Some of the marks even look familiar. Maybe, if he just focused on them, he'd remember how to read them, and-

"Ahem," says a voice from behind.

Wei blinks and whirls around. For a split second, he gets the impression of something sleek and predatory. But when he glances down, there is only a small gray fox dog thing. Jing.

Wei's instincts tell him to step back from it, but Wei isn't in the habit of stepping back from anything.

"What are you doing here?" Jing says, ears flattened.

It takes Wei a moment to speak, and then he says, "You little fucker. You ditched me."

"I... assumed that was what you would've wanted?" Jing says, before baring its teeth. "No, seriously, how did you get here? You're meant to stay on your stage, and... And go back to your own world! Did you actually seek me out? Because that could have gone horribly wrong, you know! You could've ended up... Well, you could have ended up in a lot of places, many of which would be bad. Really, _how_ did you get here?"

Wei wishes he could give an explanation better 'I just thought really hard about doors, and here I am'. "Never mind that. What the fuck is this?" Wei says, and takes the notebook out of his pocket so he can shove it at Jing. "You really thought you could just sneak off and dump me out in the ass end of nowhere now you're done with me?"

Jing only blinks indignantly at the notebook. "You're meant to be in your natural habitat with your own species. I'm not even sure how you got this far. This place has never been safe for humans. You know those walls around that little stage of yours? They're there for your own protection, and... _What the hell is that?_ "

Jing has just noticed the mask that Wei is holding.

"You tell me," Wei says.

Jing gives Wei the most accusatory glare he's ever received from a small canid.

"Tell me how you got here," Jing says, very slowly.

"Not until you tell me what the mask is all about," Wei replies, even as his instincts tell him that he could stand to be more polite. "You know more than I do about how this place works."

The spirit primly sits down and curls its tail around its paws. It pushes its whiskers forwards. It considers its options. Perhaps it is trying to decide on how to handle this situation.

Then it says, "You still need Amon rather badly, don't you?"

Great, now Wei's pretty tempted to throw the mask away. Jing's phrasing has just made the mask seem like something degrading.

"It's alright," Jing adds quickly, as if it has picked up on Wei's reaction. There's no hostility in its voice now, only reassurance. "You're just a little... tenacious. You don't let go of things easily. That's a rather double-edged sword, but it's alright."

Wei grips the mask tighter. "So the mask does have something to do with him, then."

Jing nods, but adds no further comment. 

"It doesn't look like his mask, though," Wei says, then realizes that he's no longer so angry at Jing. He's not sure if that's good or bad.

The spirit hesitates as if it's choosing its reply carefully, then offers, "I'd say the mask is a lot less fussy and ostentatious. A bit more robust. When an idea doesn't pan out, you refine it and simplify it and find ways to make it more practical, right?"

"What do you mean?"

"Amon thrived because there was a need for him. He wasn't a bad concept. Badly executed, maybe, but not a bad concept."

Wei takes a deep breath. He has a vague idea of where this conversation is going.

"Of course, that mask is a lot rougher than Amon's," Jing muses. "If that mask could speak, it'd probably say 'fuck' in every other sentence."

Wei starts to say, 'It doesn't have a mouth,' then suddenly decides that he doesn't want to talk about the mask anymore. The thing feels a little too personal. Maybe it's good that it doesn't have a mouth. The last thing he wants is to hear it speak. "Look. Forget the mask. The mask isn't the issue here."

Jing pricks its ears and says, "You-"

Wei interrupts it. "You used me and then just... fucked right off."

Jing mutters, "I left you a note."

"I could kick you," Wei informs the creature, but does refrains from doing so purely because kicking a powerful entity that claims to eat minds seems like the worst idea had by a human ever since some numbnuts tried to shove the moon spirit in a bag.

"Aren't you happy now that I've subjected the bloodbender to abject misery?"

"I don't even know what you _did_ ," Wei snaps. "I just heard a lot of noise, and-" And what? What did Wei actually witness? He remembers a bunch of grasping hands, and a match being lit, and the pleading, and...

"I just tore a chunk out of his spirit," Jing says, and thoughtfully licks its nose with a soot-black tongue. "Which worked out well, I think. It turns out that information is much fresher if you take it from someone who's still twitching. Like ikizukuri. Knowledge is a living thing. A live person's memories are constantly changing as they're being modified by new sensory input. Memories taken from the dead have less nuance."

"That's... great!" Wei says, holding up his hands. He has no idea how the fuck else he's meant to respond.

"You wanted him to live," Jing replies.

"I know!" Wei is only further annoyed by the fact that Jing sounds so reasonable. A creature like Jing has no business sounding reasonable. Wei recalls the sound bloodbender's screaming. That was not the screaming of someone who wanted to survive. That was the screaming of someone who simply wasn't allowed to die. "Look, what the hell are you?"

That's a pretty rude thing to ask, and it makes Jing sit back a little. "What do you mean?"

"What kind of spirit are you?" Wei asks, and hears an edge of fear in his own voice. "What's your purpose?"

"My purpose is to obtain information," Jing says, in the measured tones of someone who is trying to be the Bigger Adult during a difficult conversation. It then gives Wei another strange look. "Did you really come all the way here just to ask me that?"

"Don't answer my question with another question," Wei says. Amon used to use the same trick. "What's your agenda?"

Jing cants its head to one side. "Can you please just, like, take a few deep breaths? You're pretty agitated."

Wei stares at the creature. Part of him wants to see it as something huge and sharp and vicious. But there is only the small fox dog thing, which looks like it couldn't hurt anything lager than a spider-rat.

Wei does take a few deep breaths as advised.

"What did you want the bloodbender for?" Wei then asks, calmer now.

Jing seems to think very hard, then answers simply, "I wanted his knowledge of anatomy."

"Why?"

"Because knowing obscure things gives me ridiculous bragging rights," Jing says, wagging its tail. "And also, when humans become more invasive and start trying to burrow into the spirit world, I'll need to know how they work in order to deal with them."

Ah. Yeah. The whole 'potential human invasion' thing. Humans are aggressive like that. All it takes is for two of them to make a little nest and start breeding, and then boom, your entire place is infested with them: eating your food, wrecking your stuff, burning your libraries, and... Wait a minute.

"Deal with them how?" Wei asks. He's not quite sure where that thought about libraries just came from.

"That's the thing," Jing says. "I haven't decided yet. I need more information."

"You're not just... gonna kill everyone, right?" Wei says, even though there have been plenty of days when the mass extinction of humanity has seemed like a pretty appealing idea.

"No," Jing says. "I'm not that kind of spirit. Destroying humanity would be wasteful, and it would make the world very boring. I just want to find a workable solution to any challenges that may arise in the near future."

Right. 'Challenges.'

Jing speaks before Wei gets the chance to open his mouth again. "So, I've told you what my intentions are. Now, tell me what _you_ want."

There are still so many questions that Wei could ask, but he says, "I want to know why you've been so generous towards me."

"You're interests temporarily aligned with mine, and borrowing your body gave me a bit of... well, _security_ while attacking the bloodbender," Jing says simply. "Also I appreciate a pretty face and a nice pair of legs."

"That can't be it," says Wei.

Jing sits there, stone-still, for a very long moment.

Then Jing blinks slowly, and says, "Er. Why not?"

"You gotta have an ulterior motive."

"Really?" Jing asks, perplexed. "Is that, like, mandatory?"

Wei just fixes the creature with a stare.

"I'm honestly not sure what I'm meant to say." The spirit looks genuinely perplexed. "I mean, what do you expect me to say? Do you want me to tell you that I'm trying to seduce you into giving me total control of your physical body because, ummm, I want to use it for the dire purpose of trying to... I don't know... Take over the world, or subjugating humanity, or some other type of nefarious plot that's equally convoluted and impractical?"

Wei says nothing.

"To be honest," Jing continues. "I don't think I'd ever _want_ total control of your body. Bodies are a big responsibility. They're very high maintenance. You have to deal with things like defecation, and sweaty armpits, and nasal mucus, and that's when things are functioning normally, never mind when they go wrong."

"That-..." Wei says.

"I actually wonder if the Spirit of Order ever discussed this stuff with her human host. She could've been like, ' _I'll_ handle the heavy-duty energybending, while _you_ deal with all the gross stuff like eating and pooping and keeping all your weird little leaky orifices clean'." Jing pauses. "Anyway. What were we talking about? Ah. Yes. You wanted to know why I've been generous towards you."

Wei crosses his arms.

"I don't think I've been all _that_ generous, to be honest," Jing says. "I've simply been... Courteous. Giving me permission to borrow your body was an act of great self-sacrifice on your part, so I'm obliged to look after you."

"Because you're such a nice guy, right?" Wei mutters.

"Not nice," Jing says, with a wag of its tail. " _Fair._ "

Wei doesn't know what to say to that, assuming it's actually true.

Jing sighs. "But, of course, you don't trust me. You think I'm up to something naughty. You think I'm dangerous. Nothing I say could convince you that I don't mean you any harm. Yet, despite your numerous misgivings, you've still decided to enter my personal domain. You're scared and angry, yet you've still come back to me." The creature pauses, and gives him a look of academic scrutiny. "Maybe I should ask what _your_ agenda is."

"Maybe I'm just tired of not knowing things," Wei says. The statement sounds more plaintive than he'd like.

"Then at least you're talking to the right spirit." Jing says, and offers another wag, faster than the previous one. "What do you want, Wei?"

Jing's line delivery is pretty good, because Wei actually pauses and thinks about the question. There are the basic, stupid, childish wants - he wants a drink, some respite, some reassurance - and then there's the heavy-duty shit like redemption, significance, agency. He wants to repair the mess that the bloodbender has caused.

He wants to fix things.

But it's dangerous thing, to tell someone what you want.

Maybe Wei should turn around. He should just shrug and tell Jing that he's a shifty little fuck. Maybe Wei should try heading back to the physical world. 

But Jing is the most powerful creature he's ever met. And if Wei walks away now, he's going to spend the rest of his life hating himself for wasting an opportunity.

So Wei asks: "You know where everything is, right?"

"I do," says Jing."

"Could you tell me where my, uh... The others are?"

"The other Equalists? You have quite a lot of them. Any one in particular?"

Wei shouldn't pick favorites, but he still starts with, "Lan."

Jing raises its nose and bristles its whiskers.

The scratches on the walls crawl and twitch like dying things struggling to escape pain.

"She's sitting on a wall in a town about three hundred miles west of Ba Sing Se. She's currently eating a jian bing. It smells delicious," Jing announces.

"Really?" Wei still can't believe it's that easy for Jing to find out where people are.

"Yeah, it's really crunchy because it's full of baocui," Jing answers, "and there's roasted peanuts in it. It smells amazing."

"I wasn't talking about the jian bing," Wei says. "Look, uh... Can you prove to me that you know where Lan is?"

Jing move a step closer, then hesitates. "I could, but it might give you a headache."

"I'll cope."

Jing trots forwards and prods Wei's hand with its nose.

The scratches on the walls become more comprehensible. They're all random words and things that Wei wants to see as numbers, but they keep shifting and changing in a nauseating manner, as if numbers don't quite work properly in this part of the spirit world. For one very strange moment, Wei has an image of a young woman sitting on a wall, somewhere sunny. She has a scarf over her hair, and she's put a little bit of weight on, so she doesn't quite look the same, but he still knows who she is, and if he keeps concentrating, maybe he could figure out where she is, but-

Wei feels a jab of pain behind his eyes.

"Okay, okay, fine," he says, and draws back from Jing. He blinks hard a few times. The scratches on the walls have stopped moving, and he's grateful for this.

"Do you believe me now?" Jing asks.

"I'm gonna believe you as much as I believe anyone else," Wei mutters. Once again, it hits him just how dangerous the spirit is. An entity that can locate whoever it wants just by doing some magical woo woo spirit bullshit could have a very lucrative career as an assassin.

Wei feels very aware of the weight of the mask in his hand.

He collects himself, and opens his mouth to ask, 'What about Zheng? Biyu? Gansukh?' but realizes that he has a whole laundry list of names to go through. This could take a while. And if he does find out where they are, then what?

What would he tell them if he found them?

_'You know that guy who was meant to be our leader but turned out to be a gaping asshole of a human being? Well you just gotta take my word for it that he got brutalized by a fox spirit thing and I'm probably gonna have nightmares about his screaming for the next twenty years, so all's well that ends well, eh? By the way, I definitely had no idea that guy was a bloodbender and I certainly wasn't complicit with him, despite all the times I thought there was something sketchy and I knew he was lying about stuff that seemed minor at the time. Wanna go reform the Equalists? No? Okay then, I'm gonna go somewhere quiet and drink myself to death. See you round.'_

"Wei?" Jing prompts.

Absently, Wei murmurs, "You can just find anyone and anything? Just like that?"

"Uh, yes. Usually," Jing muses. "Unless they make a good effort at hiding. Like, I've never, ever been able to find a lion turtle, and there's lot of places in the spirit world where I wouldn't even dare look for someone, but-"

"You know how powerful that makes you," Wei says, "Right?"

"I can think of a lot of spirits stronger than I am," Jing mutters. "But I must admit, I can be a very handy person to have around."

And as Wei considers his options, he realizes something: he wants to trust someone. It's a visceral craving, like a need for contact. It itches at the back of his mind and burns deep within his bones. It's an instinctive urge. It's like a very sad form of horniness. Wei wants to trust Jing.

Wei wants to have hope.

Wei wants Jing to be a solution.

"Um," Jing says, tilting its head to one side. "You okay?"

"Never better," Wei murmurs.

"Well, you look super miserable," Jing points out. "But once you get back to the physical world, you need to rest and eat something high in iron, and then you'll be-"

"I don't want to go back to the physical world."

"Uh. But don't you want to go check on that young lady you just asked about? You-"

Wei amends his previous statement. "I don't want to go back to the physical world on my own." If he goes back by himself, he's just going to get used as a scapegoat for everything that went wrong, and the best case scenario is that he'll spend the rest of his life drinking until his liver dissolves. The worst case scenario is... Probably something involving the triads and a slow death. A very slow death. Benders have a lot of room for creativity when they're torturing people.

Jing stares. And then something seems to slowly dawn on the spirit, and its ears swivel, and Wei can see the exact moment where it clearly thinks, ' _Oh_.'

"You want my help," Jing says, not remotely surprised by this.

"You've been expecting this all along, huh?" Wei says, tiredly.

"I've never forced you into anything," Jing replies.

"You never needed to," Wei says, then decides that he doesn't want to continue down this line of conversation. It's the sort of dialogue that could lead to some pretty dark places, and Wei doesn't have time for that. "Look, I don't expect it to come free. What would your, uh, further assistance actually cost?"

Jing doesn't answer that, but just pushes its ears back and says, "Wow."

Then it slowly looks Wei up and down, not _quite_ undressing him with its eyes, but almost.

"We made a pretty decent team, didn't we?" Jing muses.

Wei shrugs. They got results. Or rather, Jing got results.

"Although you're a pretty stubborn cuss," Jing adds.

Wei gives a repeat performance of his previous shrug.

"But you still don't trust me," Jing points out.

"You knocked me out for a month and go roaming around while wearing my body like a suit," Wei replies even though, funnily enough, he no longer feels too violated by this. He's had memory blackouts before, but Jing caused the only blackout where he actually woke up in a better state than what he was in previously. Still, Wei adds, "Shit like that tends to put a strain on a working relationship."

"Okay, fair enough," Jing says, and sheepishly pats the ground with its front paws. "I now have a greater appreciation of why something like that might make you uncomfortable..."

"Also I'm pretty sure you were gonna wipe my memories and ditch me if I ever got caught while you were using me for stuff," Wei adds.

"Um. Yes. I am sorry about that. I wasn't expecting to-..." Jing trails off. Its ears droop. "Never mind. I'm sorry."

"And you shaved off my mustache."

Now Jing doesn't even blink. "That was the most incriminating mustache I have ever seen and I stand by my decision a hundred percent."

"You're an asshole."

"That mustache did you no favors."

"Regardless," says Wei, "You're my best chance right now, and I reckon you know that. So what do you want from me in exchange?"

Jing sits back down, and looks at the wall past Wei's left shoulder, thoughtful.

"I mean, hey," Wei adds, and laughs in a way that sounds too forced, "I'm willing to deal with you cos I reckon that even you'll probably fuck me over at some point, at least you'll still give me the benefit of a reach-around first, you get me?"

Jing appears to give this statement due consideration, then says, "That's gross."

It is indeed. A lot of things about this situation are, in Jing's words, gross. But Wei's a little too old to be phased by anything anymore. At the end of the day, your body is just a commodity, one way or another.

Wei shrugs, and says, "Look, I'm not completely stupid. I know how this stuff works. You're stronger than I am, and I want something from you. You're gonna get plenty of opportunities to screw me over, and I expect you to do what's expedient. I don't have to like it, but that's the way it is." That's the way it always is. You can spend years spouting rhetoric about equality, but the fact remains: the strong will always take advantage of the weak. It's a universal constant.

Jing just squints at him. "Okay, but... Here's an idea: what if I _don't_ screw you over?"

Wei laughs. "I'm not gonna hold my breath on that one."

"Okay, fine. I'm going to, um... Try to negotiate with you as best as I can," Jing says. "So, here's my terms: I want partial use of your body for twenty years, unless you are killed, or you end up seriously incapacitated, or you get caught by the authorities before then."

Twenty years. When those twenty years are up, will he be more Jing than Wei?

Does this even matter? Being Wei was never all that great.

"Our deal will be open to renegotiation at any given time," Jing says. "I don't want absolute control, and I will value your experience and judgment. However, in the event that your life is threatened or your consciousness is compromised, I'll temporarily intervene to ensure the preservation of your physical form. This intervention will not last longer than a few hours. Understood?"

"Yeah."

"We good so far?"

"Just peachy," Wei says.

Jing slowly exhales, then continues, "I must warn you that I will also, um... Yell at you if you drink too much, pick fights with people, or take any other needless risks."

"You'll yell at me, huh?"

"Really loudly."

"Okay," Wei says. "That shouldn't be an issue."

Jing gives him a long look, then coughs politely, and asks, "Any questions before we proceed?"

Only about a shitload. Wei could ask: do you intend to eat anyone else's mind? You have some of the bloodbender's knowledge now, right? Does that mean you'll be able to do the thumb-on-forehead thing to people? What about the bloodbender? What happens to someone after you tear out a chunk of their spirit? Why are you interested in human anatomy? Is possession going to have any long-term physical effects on me? Why do I keep seeing weird shit? Is my brain going to be okay? How crazy am I going to end up being?

But, at the end of the day, maybe it doesn't matter what the answers are. Wei wants some of Jing's power. And if Jing is going to fuck him over at some point, then... Well, Wei's got no way of preventing that. Getting fucked over is one of life's great inevitabilities. All you can do is make the best of things before the universe unfastens its pants and tells you to grab your ankles.

"No," Wei says, "I've made up my mind. You can have me."

Jing stares at him, half in scrutiny, half in disbelief. "You're sure?"

"The world is shitty and unpredictable and I'm not sure of anything, so no, not really. But I reckon this is what I want."

Jing blinks. "Okay, _someone_ needs to drink some water and take a nap. Okay. Right. Hold out your hand."

Wei does so, and doesn't dwell on the fact that, very soon, the hand might no longer be his.

"Thank you," Jing says gently.

And for only a moment, Wei is standing in front of something huge and silvery-sleek. There is a sense of smoke and metal, of machinery and furnace heat. The shape of it is canine enough that, just briefly, Wei remembers all the reasons why you're meant to be afraid of dogs, although the spirit is not, technically, a dog. The spirit is not technically a fox, either. The spirit is not technically _anything_ , apart from the concept of a hunter, a scavenger, a thief, a consumer of humanity's leftovers. Wei is a leftover.

The jaws open. There are rows of teeth.

The last thing Wei sees is himself, but through the creature's eyes, and he realizes how differently spirits view the world. There are two images, like a photograph with a double-exposure: there is a scrawny middle-aged man whose expression is one of tired resignation, and also there is _something else_. Something poisonous with spite, something verminous and fast. It's a thing that knows far too much about pain and fear, an escapee of a world more brutal than this one. And it is very, very attractive, in the way that dangerous things usually are.

The jaws close. It doesn't hurt.


	13. Spring, ASC 171

_Spring, ASC 171_

There is a swathe of gray, too pale to be smoke and too dark to be a snowstorm.

\--

In another world, Noatak wakes under a pile of smelly blankets in a tiny room with white walls. 

This doesn't surprise Noatak. This is just dream logic - one moment you're in one place, the next moment, you're somewhere else - though he has a headache, and he's reasonably sure that people in dreams do not get headaches. 

\--

Noatak lies still for a while. He notes the door to the room is closed. A growing sense of unease courses through him.

He doesn't know how he got here.

He has a nagging feeling that he's overlooked something important. A missed appointment, perhaps.

His mouth tastes of salt.

\--

When the unease becomes too great, Noatak kicks off the blankets and sits up so he can make a quick inspection of himself. 

He doesn't yet know why, but he's compelled to check that he isn't missing anything. He's aware of how ridiculous this is, even as he does a quick count of his fingers and ears before grabbing his crotch to make sure that, yes, his body is intact.

He has to repeat the inspection three times before he can convince himself that he's alright, and even then, he's left with a persistent feeling of wrongness.

What if he's lost something intangible, though?

What about his bending?

He performs quick test by spitting onto the palm of his hand and freezing the saliva into a small sphere. He can still bend. Good. He's not yet sure why this matters, but it does.

He then runs his hands over his shoulders and under his clothes. There are a few dark brown spots on the front of his shirt, but nothing sinister. And there are bandages wrapped around his torso, yet that doesn't surprise him; the bandages feel familiar by this point. The burns underneath are still raw, but not too sticky. He's healing.

He would desperately like to believe that he's fine.

He stands up and runs a hand over the plaster of the walls. Lucidity returns to him in shards. He knows the following: he's somewhere in the Southern Earth Kingdom, and he has made a lot of people angry.

Noatak lies back down, and stares at the ceiling for a while.

"Huh. You look much better," says a female voice to his left.

The door to the room has been opened, allowing some light inside. A dour young woman in cheap healer's robes is standing a few paces away from where Noatak lies. 

Noatak didn't notice the woman come in. This tendency of his, to not see people, might be a recurring problem in his life (though failing to see people who _are_ there might be slightly better than seeing people who _aren't_ there).

The woman has a heartbeat, though. She has blood. She's real.

The woman gives up on waiting for a reply, and walks away, leaving the door open. 

Noatak stays put.

In time, the healer returns with some water and a bowl of stew. She places them on the floor within his reach, then stands back and watches him cautiously as he eats.

Noatak's mouth hurts, and the salt in the stew stings his gums, but speech comes easily. "What happened to me?" he asks, although he's not yet sure if he wants to know.

"Seems like you had a bad reaction to something," the healer says, and crouches next to him as if she's too tired to sustain her own weight. "The quality of the local product has gone downhill over the past few years."

Local product? Ah. She must think that he's just a lost vagrant who took a bad turn after partaking of something nasty. That'd be a nicely mundane explanation for everything.

And Noatak actually wonders, just for a moment: _Is she right?_ Drugs would be a plausible culprit for his current situation, and Noatak doesn't feel like he knows himself well enough to be able to say, 'ah, no, I would never binge on opiates as a form of escapism. That's not something I'd do'.

"You look much better than you did when you came in," the healer says. "Maybe all you needed was a good rest."

"Am I free to leave?" Noatak asks. For the healer's sake, he hopes the answer is 'yes'.

She just nods.

"Thank you for your help," Noatak tells her, struggling to sound gracious. He reaches into his pockets for some money that isn't there. Not that it matters, as the healer notices his gesture and quickly shakes her head in refusal.

"You could leave an offering at the shrine across the street sometime," the healer says, and for just a moment, Noatak actually considers doing this. Then his cynicism sets in, and the whole idea of thanking the spirits for his safety seems laughable.

Then he decides that he doesn't want to think about the spirits at all.

A bout of nausea worms through him.

He stands up, craving fresh air. He can see a dingy corridor beyond the doorway of the room. He thinks he knows where the corridor leads - _to stairs, that go up to a stage_ \- before he realizes that, no, this place is new to him. He's never been here before.

Noatak makes himself ask, "By the way, where did you find me?"

"I didn't," the healer says. "The owner of a wine shop found you passed out by her front door. She got some of her boys to carry you here so you wouldn't scare off her customers."

That doesn't ring any bells.

What _is_ the last thing that Noatak remembers?

Waking up on a shore? He did wake up on a shore. Possibly not for the first time.

And what was before that?

There was fire.

Something tells him that he shouldn't try to recall any more. There was pain, and the best thing to do with pain is quarantine it in the past until you figure out what to do with it. ( _If_ you ever figure out what to do with it.)

"Where am I?" he asks, a little embarrassed by the question.

"Well, you're in the hospital on the North Road, you know, by the market...?"

"I mean, which town?"

The healer gives him a look that plainly says 'yikes'. "Ruyi. You're in Ruyi."

Shit.

"You know," the healer says carefully, "You can stay here for as long as you want, if you're not feeling too good."

What does he look like to her?

"I'll be fine," Noatak says. "I just need some fresh air. Thank you." He manages to offer a bow before heading out the door.

"Wait..." the healer says as Noatak briskly leaves the room, but he pretends that he hasn't heard.

\--

Noatak paces through dormitories full of ragged people. He draws a deep breath as he exits the building. 

He can walk just fine. His limbs are okay, as is his sense of balance, so he doesn't seem to be suffering from the lingering effects of any narcotic. He tells himself that his mind should clear as the day goes on, and then perhaps the sense of wrongness will go away.

He takes one glances behind him (it looks like he just came from a storehouse that's been converted into a makeshift hospital), then surveys the street that he's just stepped out onto. 

There are a few people outdoors: a woman with a food stall, a sour-faced matron with an armful of groceries, a group of youths in workwear, a girl selling lighters. 

Noatak stares at the girl selling lighters for far too long. Something deep in his chest twists in pain.

The girl spares him only a frightened glance, then ignores him.

Noatak eventually forces himself to move, and he walks quickly, desperate to get as far as possible from the noise of human heartbeats. He keeps his gaze on the pavement.

\--

As the pain in his chest increases, he dwells on how stupid it was to accept food and water from the healer.

\--

He hurries onwards, only stopping occasionally to drink water or get his breath back. He heads to the sea. He's a waterbender. The sea should be where he's strongest.

When he reaches the docks, he looks out across the water.

His hands start to shake, though he doesn't know why. It's as if he's walked through thick snowfall and come to the edge of a crevasse without realizing it until the last second. He can feel the pull of the void.

He puts his hand on his chest and massages the skin over his heart, and then he turns around, abandoning any ideas about travelling by sea. He heads back inland.

\--

As he trudges back north through town, the world starts to slip out of focus, and he loses interest in watching his surroundings. He'd rather listen to the sound of his own footfalls. Initially they're a steady, pleasant rhythm, but the further he walks, the clumsier they become. He's limping.

Noatak slips into a dingy alleyway and rests a while, to get his breath back again.

He decides to inspect his left leg.

There's a small puncture wound on the calf, partially healed. 

He should know how he got that injury.

He can't remember.

(Has this happened before? Does he go through pointless little circles where he attempts to remember things, fails miserably, then forgets making the attempt to remember?)

What if he makes himself forget things?

Aren't some of the things he knows best forgotten?

_It's just brain damage. You can switch off all sorts of things if you tinker with what's up here. Bending. Speech. Emotion. Reasoning. Memory. Temporal awareness._

Well, that's _one_ thing he clearly remembers saying. He's not a complete amnesiac. He could probably figure out _who_ he said it to, as well, but... Not right now. There are things he doesn't want to think about just yet. The pain in his chest doesn't seem to be going away, and his eyes are still watering.

He wipes his right eye on his wrist.

He doesn't look too closely at the small smear of red left behind on his sleeve.

\--

He walks until he he wonders if he's moving in circles.

He tells himself that this is fine. Maybe he doesn't need to leave the town any time soon. Maybe the best thing he can do is familiarize himself with the, just enough to give him a slight advantage in a fight, though he doesn't know who or what he might need to fight yet.

The town all looks the same, though. It doesn't matter that the town isn't particularly big, or that one side of it faces sea: Noatak still struggles to tell the streets apart from each other. And as he slowly begins to grasp the implications, a sense of abject fear sets in.

He's meant to be so much smarter than this.

He ducks into an empty yard and leans against a wall, and he closes his eyes as he vomits up the stew he ate earlier.

He struggles to convince himself that his confusion will wear off eventually. He's been drugged, that's all. From something in the stew or before that. _Drugs_ are an explanation that suits him. It's an explanation that's relatively less horrible than some of the alternatives.

He'll be fine.

It has to wear off.

He doubles up as another bout of retching catches him off guard.

And, as he straightens and wipes his mouth, he hears something hit the brickwork close to his head.

When he glances up, he's strangely unsurprised to see an arrow embedded in a patch of loose mortar. Noatak's first thoughts are 'this again?', and 'at least the arrow isn't stuck in my leg this time', and then he recalls, momentarily clear-headed, how he ended up with the puncture wound in his calf. _That_ was certainly an arrow.

They're good weapons, really. Very effective against benders, who can't always react to them quickly enough. Even more effective against bloodbenders, who rely on attacking people in their immediate proximity. Maybe it's a pity Future Industries never found much use for them and... 

Wait a minute.

Noatak struggles to focus, although the threat of imminent death is a wonderful tonic for clarifying the mind.

The arrow stuck in the brickwork looks quite different to the one he that he pulled out of his leg, back when... Back when, well, _never mind_. Concentrate on the arrow. Study it. There's no syringe on this one, and it looks lighter. Better suited for long range, perhaps.

When Noatak stands at his full height, the arrow is about level with his neck.

The person who shot that arrow is probably adjusting their sights.

Noatak ducks, out of reflex, before the next arrow whistles by him. 

The second arrow bounces off the wall above his right shoulder. 

As Noatak dashes out of the yard, seeking cover, he steals a glance in the direction that the arrows came form. There is a clock tower some distance away. Noatak spots movement on its rooftop. _It's the same person as before,_ he thinks, but then why are the arrows different? No, this person is probably someone else. Has to be. Gut feeling. And Noatak has made many, many people angry.

Noatak does not over-analyze things.

Noatak runs.


	14. Spring, ASC 171

_Spring, ASC 171_

\--

In another town many miles away, there is a young woman, arguably a chemist by trade, sometimes a medic, sometimes many other things, but now unemployed.

She doesn't go by the name Lan anymore, although she's still Lan in the privacy of her own mind. 

Lan is at a table by a food stand with a plate of bakpia and some tea as she reads a newspaper. 

She skims over the reports of air pirate activity around the Mori province. Most of the reports are old news by now, and besides, Lan can guess who some of the pirates are. The descriptions of the airships are very distinctive. Sato's people always struck her as being opportunists. Less interested in social change, more interested in showing off their new toys. She doesn't regret distancing herself from them.

There was a spate of raids on a few large shipping vessels a few weeks back (risky and high-profile, yet successful), but apparently things have been quiet since then. This catches Lan's attention, if only briefly, and she wonders what people are up to. The nature of the raids suggests they needed money in a pinch, but that doesn't gel with her suspicion that someone - and she's quite sure she knows who - has been bankrolling the pirates.

She isn't sure what's going on, and she isn't sure if she cares. Life has never been generous with answers.

She gives up on the newspaper after she realizes that it's all just stories about petty criminals, and she's had enough of people like that. She folds the newspaper up, and pushes it away from her as if it's something filthy. 

As she does this, she catches movement out the corner of her eye. 

The skin on the back of her neck crawls.

Someone - a man, judging by the height - has crossed the street to approach the food stand. Lan watches him in her peripheral vision, so he's just a long shadow at the edge of her sight.

As he moves closer, Lan can feel his eyes on her. She doesn't detect any hostility in the way he moves, just curiosity, which is more a cause for annoyance than alarm. Unwanted attention from men is an occupational hazard when you travel alone. Still, the skin-crawly feeling persists.

Lan doesn't want his company. She begins to calculate ways to get rid of him. She doesn't glance at him as he nears.

His shadow falls over her.

Then he asks, "Do you mind if I sit here?"

The voice sounds like one she knows.

Lan looks up. The man is tall, and he's handsome in the way that people from the Fire Nation often are, although his eyes are blue. He's not real Fire Nation then, she notes. A mutt. A good example of hybrid vigor (though she immediately chastises herself for that thought). She assesses him: well-dressed but not too well-dressed, athletic, relaxed. 

If he's a cop, then he's one of the slippery ones. He smiles. Most cops can't smile like that.

And if he's not a cop, then he could be something far worse.

 _Good bearing,_ she thinks. _Military?_ She remembers Amon, and his composure.

Lan's heart hammers in her chest.

As she tries to untangle her first impressions of him, she can't shake the conviction that she's seen him before.

It takes her far too long to place him.

And then her mind reels, and her first thought is: That's not the Lieutenant.

The man's smile turns into a grin, revealing two rows of perfectly white teeth. Anyone with a voice like his should have teeth that are yellow from nicotine, but not him. The front teeth are slightly chipped, just as she remembers them.

The man pointedly looks at her remaining bakpia, and asks, "Aren't you going to eat that?"

Lan dumbly shakes her head.

The man grabs the bun and wolfs it down, then takes a seat opposite from her.

Lan needs to stop staring, but can't. His moustache is gone, and his hair is slicked back, yet that isn't enough to explain why he seems so different.

The man focuses his full attention on her. It's like being under a spotlight; the air temperature seems to increase by a few degrees. 

Then he glances away, which comes as a relief. His grin vanishes as if someone's flipped a little 'off' switch somewhere.

"I'm glad you're okay," he murmurs.

There's enough affection and embarrassment in that statement to make it sound sincere, and the hangdog expression on his face convinces her that he's definitely the Lieutenant. The air of composure and self-possession seems to evaporate right off him, and he goes right back to looking like a tired guy in his forties who's lost too many fights. 

Lan is suddenly tired and overwhelmed, and she wants to cry. If she still trusted him, then she might ask for a hug. 

"Y-you asshole," she blurts out. "No one knew where you'd gone."

He looks suitably ashamed. "Yeah, um, about that..." He keeps his gaze on his hands as he dusts crumbs off his fingers. "I, uh... I'm sorry. I would've told you where I was if I thought it was safe."

"You vanished," Lan says. She can't stop herself from sounding accusatory. The past few months have been rough.

He keeps his gaze lowered. "Guess so."

Lan grips the edge of her seat and fights the desire to hit him.

"Look, I'm really sorry," the man says wretchedly. "Things have been crazy."

"The last time I saw you," Lan says, voice cold and quiet, because she can't stop herself, "We were on that little island in the middle of nowhere. And we'd landed. And it was too quiet. And there were _these people_. And _you_ went into a radio shed. And I had no idea what was going on. I knew something had gone wrong somewhere, and I asked Takamori what would happen to you, and he said you were arranging a deal with a guy who could help us, and I thought _no_ , you wouldn't do that..."

The man doesn't tell her to shut up, even though they're in public. The surrounding area is quiet and there's no one in earshot, but that doesn't excuse Lan's lack of discretion.

The man is quiet for a moment, thoughtful as if in recollection. Then he says, " _Takamori_ said that, huh?" He snorts. "I never fucking arranged anything. Not with people like _that_ , anyway."

"Takamori said they could offer us work," Lan says. She remembers, vividly, being led aboard Takamori's airship as he explained things to them, trying to make everything sound _reasonable_. "They were going to offer protection in exchange for information. They just wanted to exploit us while we were weak."

"Yeah," the man says. "I figured."

"And you vanished," Lan says. They'd been left without leadership, creating a power vacuum that Takamori had made a grab at filling. Lan didn't even know Takamori all that well. He'd been one of Sato's employees, like the rest of the airship crews, who had only a tenuous relationship to their comrades who operated within the sprawl of Republic City. And now Sato's people - fragmented as they were - were left with the lion's share of their remaining materiel, which they were apparently using to rob people, according to all the reports of pirate activity.

Lan repeats, "After everything else that happened, _you vanished_."

The man grimaces and closes his eyes. He used to make the exact same expression whenever he had a dislocated shoulder and Amon was about to pop back into its socket for him.

"It wasn't something I got a lot of choice in," the man says, although he doesn't sound certain about this. He's guilty. "I... Fuck. Were you okay? What happened?"

"I couldn't stand listening to Takamori. I left."

The man now eyes her. "You left?"

"Yes."

"I'm guessing," he says, "that they didn't just let you walk away."

"I was fine," Lan snaps. She'd waiting until they were aboard one of the ships, and before it could undock, she'd made a grab for the bomb release. Takamori had been meant to do a run across the financial district, so his bombs were all delay action in order to penetrate the taller buildings. That meant they were tough enough to withstand a direct impact. That also meant hey had ninety-second fuses.

Ninety seconds was just enough time for everyone to panic after the bombs spilled out of Takamori's ship and clunked on the ground below. Lan had snuck off and stole a boat while the others were busy trying to disarm the devices. 

"You always were smart," the man murmurs. "Should've figured you'd run rings around everyone."

Lan's throat tightens. She puts her hands flat on the table. She looks at her fingernails, all clean and long, and she curls her fists so the nails dig into her palms.

"Where did you go?" Lan asks.

The man closes his eyes again. Another wince.

"He... I mean, I was taken to the mainland," he says. "But I got away. And, uhh..."

Lan watches him.

"I, um, I don't know how to put this, but we might've..." He drums his fingers on the tabletop. "...Hell, I don't know how much of this you're going to believe-"

Lan says nothing.

The man puts his elbows on the tables, and places his head in his hands, and starts to laugh. "Shit. I spent _ages_ rehearing what I was gonna say to you when I saw you again, and now I can't remember any of it. And I can't lie to you about anything. I have to tell you the truth. But the truth is so stupid, you're gonna kill me."

What does he mean?

His inability to give a straight answer is disturbing. Lan's heart starts thumping again, the same way it did a few minutes ago when she thought he was someone dangerous.

"There's no way I can explain anything," the man says.

Then he looks at her, sees the expression on her face, and looks a little like he's just been kicked in the ribs.

"Look," he says, "Watch this."

Before Lan can speak, he puts the pad of his index finger in his mouth, and bites down hard. It looks insane. He just chomps on his own finger with the same ease as biting into a piece of bakpia.

Then the holds out his hand to show the neat chunk of skin missing from his fingertip. It's a nice square hole. He does have good teeth.

"Why-" Lan begins.

"Watch," he says. "Look. You have to see this. It's great. It took-... I mean, we... It took us... It took _a while_ to figure it out, but... Watch."

A fat bead of blood wells up over the wound. 

The man draws a deep breath.

The bead shrinks and becomes more viscous, darkening, scabbing, lightening again.

It takes Lan a moment to realize that the wound is closing itself in a matter of seconds.

She grabs his hand so she can inspect the injury. Watching skin knit itself back together so quickly is disgusting, and unnatural, and utterly fascinating.

"See?" the man says, then says something that's utterly out of character: "Physical bodies are just systems. It took a while to figure out the details, but this body is already quite adept at repairing itself, so all I had to do was streamline existing functions."

The scab on his finger is now thin and purplish. Lan digs her fingernails in and peels it off to check that it's real.

"WHAT THE FUCK, _OW!_ " the man says. (Some distance away, the man operating the food stall gives the two of them a very odd look.)

Lan reopens the injury, making fresh blood drip onto the table.

Lan then sits back, oddly nauseated.

She's watched waterbenders heal people before. She compiles a list of reasons why _this_ , whatever it is, seems different to that. Maybe it's because waterbenders don't work so quickly. Healing via waterbending doesn't seem so aggressive.

"It took a lot of effort to make that scab!" the man protests. "Do you have any idea how complicated skin is? Do you know how easily skin goes _wrong_ if you don't get it to mend properly? You end up with keloids, or tumors! You don't even need to do much to make human skin go all tumorous, which leaves a lot of room for improvement-"

"What just happened?" Lan says, very quietly. This conversation is getting stranger and stranger.

He pops his fingertip in his mouth and sucks on it. "Um. Energybending?"

Lan can't reply to that.

The man adds: "I really hate the term 'energybending', though. It's too broad. What's energybending, really? Re-routing energy from one place to another? Turning one type of energy into another type of energy? Because, if you use the latter definition, you're technically energybending when you catabolize, and I really don't think that digesting lunch counts as energybending..."

Lan keeps staring.

The man clears his throat. "But for the sake of simplicity, let's say I just energybent."

Lan blinks, just once, very slowly. 

Lan also considers standing up and flipping the table over.

"How?" says Lan.

"Uh," the man says, "You're going to find it really condescending if I tell you it's complicated, aren't you?"

Lan can't reply to that, either.

As she sits in silence for a few seconds, she notices things, like how he looks apologetic, even scared, and how his skin has a greyish tint that it lacked a moment ago. There are shadows under his eyes that weren't there when he first sat at the table.

It's definitely different to healing via waterbending, then.

"W-what did you do?" Lan repeats.

The man takes another deep breath. "This is where it gets weird."

"You've already made it weird," Lan hisses.

"Fair point."

Lan hears herself say, "You can't energybend." He was - is - the Lieutenant. He's the least spiritual person she's ever met. The man enjoys greasy food, and dick jokes, and sentimental bourgeois operas about hapless courtesans. Any religious inclinations he might've had were picked up from Amon, who practically _was_ his religion anyway.

"Technically everyone can energybend, depending on how broadly you define it," the man muses. "Most humans just don't know how to do it consciously. Except for the ones who bend elements, I guess. And they're not really doing anything fancy with it. They're just pushing little... molecules? I want to say molecules, but I don't think that's right, but let's say _molecules_ anyway... They're just pushing molecules around." He looks at the pale scar that's now on his fingertip. "Humans don't think too much about energybending because their physical bodies handle most of their work for them, so they don't have to sweat over the details. I mean, okay, sometimes a human yogi comes along who figures out how to live for a thousand years sustained purely by water and farts, or transcends their physical form, or _flies_ , but humans like that aren't common. Most humans just let their body handle energy management on autopilot. Humans are either very lazy or clever, depending on how you look at it."

Okay. Lan grips the edges of her seat, just so she doesn't fall off if the world somehow suddenly stops turning.

The man continues, "Now, _spirits_ , spirits tend to be good at energybending because they have to make a conscious _effort_ at it, because spirits don't have physical forms unless they purposefully manifest them, which is pretty demanding, which is why it's much easier to borrow existing bodies instead of building them from scratch, and-"

Lan stares. Who the hell is this stranger who is speaking to her?

The peers back at her, sheepishly, then glances away as if he's made a terrible faux pas.

Then he says, out of the blue, "You know the story about how the Avatar is just an ordinary human with a spirit working some of the controls, and the spirit handles the heavy-duty energy manipulation stuff, like bend all four elements and shoot lighting out of their ass or whatever?"

Lan knows the story. Knowing the story doesn't make things any clearer.

The man says, "I wanted to see if this scenario could be replicated."

Lan knows, then, that the man is not the Lieutenant.

Her brain snags on something he's just said.

_A spirit working some of the controls._

Lan has had enough. She's done with everyone's bullshit. She wants to have a life that makes sense.

Lan gets up from the table, and walks away.

\--

She barely makes it to the next block before the man catches up with her. He moves fast, covering the distance in an easy loping walk. He could probably outrun her, if it came to that, and the awareness of this fills her with a primal horror.

"Shit, this isn't going well at all," the man says. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I've just realized I might be the sort of person who doesn't think things through properly, which... would explain a lot, actually."

Lan keeps walking, can't respond with anything better than, "Leave me alone."

He stops walking, falling behind her, and she hears him say, "Okay."

She pauses, and looks back at him. He's not following anymore. He's just standing there, looking about as lost as she feels at the moment.

Lan doesn't want to see him like this. He's so Lieutenant-like, but not quite Lieutenant-like enough. And the Lieutenant is meant to be one of the few people who know what to do.

The tightness in Lan's throat increases. The world turns blurry.

She starts to cry.

"Well, fuck," says the man.

Right before she wipes her eyes, she sees him move towards her. He hesitates once he's barely two steps away, and asks, "If I hug you, will you explode?"

Lan takes a moment to figure out why he's asking this, then shakes her head. She's not carrying anything volatile on her person.

He puts his arms around her, although he's not exactly the best person to receive a hug from; his body is all bones and sinew. He smells faintly of burning paper.

"I'm really sorry about everything," he murmurs into her hair. "I want to fix things."

Lan draws away from him a little so she doesn't end up wiping her nose on his shirt, and sniffs. She hasn't figured out what his presence means to her or whether he poses any sort of threat, but she wants to be pragmatic, so she asks, "How did you find me?" If he can find her, then surely others could as well.

"I'm just good at finding stuff," he says. "Don't worry. You're safe."

Why should she believe him?

"You're not the Lieutenant," she whispers.

His voice is a low sussuration as he replies, "Not entirely. Does that bother you? No one's the same person their entire lives anyway. There were plenty of times where the Lieutenant wasn't the Lieutenant - shit, prior to being the Lieutenant, he was Lee the grumpy asshole custodian at Central City Station, and prior to that he was Zhang Yong the fry cook at Liu Yang's Restaurant on Five Treasures Street until he got fired for hitting one of his coworkers in a face with a ladle, and prior to _that_ he was Zhang Yong the dishwasher, and prior to _that_ he was Hu the thief, and so on. But no one cares about those guys, 'cos none of them had a fancy moustache, a good job, or an influential partner." He shrugs. "Anyway, you're right. I'm not really him anymore. But at this point, who'd want to be?"

She puts her hand on his chest, but doesn't shove him away in disgust just yet. "What happened to you?" 

"Explaining that might take a while," he mutters. 

Lan wipes her face on her sleeves. Her mind lingers on some of the things he's said about the Avatar. She remembers Amon's talk of spirits. And it had seem so believable, once, that the spirits might choose a new representative to carry out their will, forgotten as they were in this day and age. 

How much time had the Lieutenant spent listening to Amon talk about such things? 

And just what, exactly, would the Lieutenant be willing to do in order to get what he wanted? 

The man then snaps her out of her thoughts by saying, "Can I get some food before I try to explain anything else? The stall we just left does noodles with pig sheep liver." 

Lan looks up, stares. This isn't really the time to be thinking of noodles. 

He shrugs at the look she's giving him. "I'm very high-performance and I'm not very fuel efficient at the best of times," he says. 

Lan makes a noise of disbelief, and stands back from him so he can return to the stall. 

\-- 

Lan hangs back and watches him as he lopes back to the stall. After a bit of what looks like friendly negotiation with the owner, the man is passed some chopsticks and a bowl. 

The man takes a seat at the table where Lan was previously. 

Lan slowly walks over and joins him again. 

The bowl in front of the man has to contain eighty percent meat and twenty percent noodles. The meat looks pink. 

"That's not cooked properly," Lan says automatically. 

"I'll be fine," he says, and swallows a piece of meat without chewing it. 

Lan doesn't dare tell him otherwise. 

She resumes watching him. Something in her hindbrain insists she should stop wondering who he is, and start wondering _what_ he is. She thinks of old ghost stories she used to hear as a child, about people who vanished only to return later as someone else, or something else. 

"What do I call you?" she asks. 

The question makes him pause with a piece of food halfway to his mouth. He starts to make a hard 'Jh' sound, then hesitates, then says, "...Jiang." 

Then he glares down at his bowl of liver and says, "Really? Wow. Smooth. Real smooth." 

Lan doesn't know what to make of him. 

"So, Jiang," she says, stressing his name, "W-what are you going to do next?" 

"Dunno," he says. "Find Zheng and the others and make sure they're okay. Then find Takamori and punch him in the dick. Maybe go yell at Gansukh, 'cos I'm pretty sure she's doing shit that's outside her remit." He glances to the newspaper that Lan has left on the table. 

Lan throws discretion to the wind, and asks outright, "How do you know?" Who's been informing him? 

"Knowing stuff is my job," Jiang says, then wrinkles his nose. "...Although just because I know something doesn't mean I can understand it, or that I can find a practical application for it, or... Nevermind. Anyway, once I've caught up with the others, I'm gonna take another shot at... things. Maybe I should start a business, or patent something, or... Hell, I don't know. _Maybe_ I should renounce my wicked ways and find religion. That'd be great." 

"But what about-" Lan tries to think of a way to phrase things so he'll know who she's referring to, "...Ah-... The one who caused this whole mess?" 

Jiang blinks in recognition, and looks contemplative as he chews a piece of gristle. Then he lets out a throaty chortle before making an operatic little gesture with his chopsticks, twirling them as if he's a painted beauty with a fan in his hand. He enunciates slowly, with a perfect cadence: "He went mad with guilt from all the terrible things he had done. Every misdeed - every deceit, every act of exploitation, every hypocrisy - bit deep into what little conscience he had left. And so, haunted by his past, he was left a broken wreck, barely capable of speech. As his senses gradually failed him, so did his body, until he was beyond recognition. Some people said he was cursed. Some say that his tragic end was his comeuppance for making empty claims about representing powers beyond mortal comprehension." 

Lan struggles to work out if he's quoting dialogue from something, then realizes that actually, no, he isn't. 

Jiang cants his head to one side and smiles. "He will be remembered as a warning to others. He will become a story. Don't tell lies, mothers could say to their children, or you'll end up like him." 

Lan also realizes that she's stopped breathing. 

Then Jiang says, "No, but seriously, I couldn't give a shit about that guy anymore. Fuck that asshole." 

"But-" Lan says, almost a gasp. 

"Lemme eat my bowl of liver," Jiang growls. 

Lan sits in silence, her attention focused on the fading scar on his fingertip. 

She remembers an occasion when the Lieutenant had fallen three storeys into a dumpster full of kitchen waste on a summer night, and he'd walked away without a scratch, and Zheng had jokingly said, "Is that guy even human?" (He certainly hadn't smelled human after falling into a dumpster.) 

She's still not sure if she has an answer to that. 

"No one ever ushered in a new era of balance on an empty stomach," Jiang grumbles. 

Lan actually lets him finish the rest of his meal in peace. 


	15. Summer, ASC 171

_Summer, ASC 171_

\--

But in a sunny courtyard with a jade green lawn, Tarrlok carries a plate of pastries towards a house.

\--

Tarrlok finds Ty Lee in the house's reception room, exactly where Korra said she'd be. She's sitting at a cherrywood table with some tea and a plate of tteok in front of her, a cheap-looking paperback held in her delicate little hands. She is wearing a pair of spectacles. The frames of the spectacles are as aggressively pink as everything else in the room.

As soon as Tarrlok steps in,Ty Lee puts the book down so she can peer at Tarrlok over her glasses. The first thing she says is: "Oh, you had a haircut."

Tarrlok refrains from running his hand over his scalp. He's uncomfortably aware of his own ears.

Ty Lee leans forwards a little and asks, "Did you cut your hair to prove some kind of point? Because people do that."

"I... don't think so," Tarrlok says. He changes the subject: "Korra said you might know something about Equalist chi blockers."

"Ahhhh." Ty Lee nods sagely, and plucks the tea pot from the table so she can pour out two cups. "Sit yourself down and get comfy."

Tarrlok takes a seat on a frilly cushion. He puts the plate of tarts next to the tteok. It's actually a small relief to put the tray down. The little pink pastries were an affront to whatever modicum of masculinity he has left.

"What do you already know about chi blocking, dear?" Ty Lee asks. She grins a little, allowing Tarrlok to see the smudge of lipstick on her teeth.

"It's a martial art based on using close punches to strike people's meridians."

"Anything else?" Ty Lee asks.

"Well, we didn't know very much about the technique until we started seizing Equalist propaganda," Tarrlok admits. "And most of the practitioners we encountered seemed like amateurs. So, truthfully, I can't tell you much."

"There aren't many chi blocker sifus," Ty Lee says. "Maybe it's good that the Equalists kinda tried to revive it. I know that sounds a little wrong, but I always try to look on the positive side, you know?"

Tarrlok can't think of anything nice to say in reply. Chi blocking has always struck him as being a rather invasive fighting style. Using someone's own body against them is one of the ugliest things you can do.

When Ty Lee hands him a cup of tea, he accepts it without offering thanks.

"I mean, there were times when I'd worry about the art dying out," Ty Lee continues, oblivious to whatever expression Tarrlok might be wearing at the moment. "I learned chi blocking from my Auntie Ling Ling at the circus when I was really young, and when she passed away, I was like, 'oh poop, now I'm the only chi blocker I know'. _Then_ I taught it to the Kyoshi Warriors, although they're still big on using weapons because, y'know, tradition. So I thought I'd better set up a kwoon so I could teach as many people as possible and, well," she gestures at the reception room, "here we are! You know, I've had so many students here over the years that I can barely keep them straight.

Ah. _Students._ Tarrlok sits up a little.

"Katara did ask me if I knew anyone who might've taught your brother," Ty Lee prattles on. "She asked because she thought he might try returning to somewhere familiar to him. And he was last seen somewhere sorta close to here." She lowers her voice to a whisper. "Don't tell her I said this, but Katara's got a bit of a bee in her bonnet about him."

Yes. Noatak has that effect on people. He's a veritable apiary in a haberdashery shop.

Ty Lee is waiting as if she expects Tarrlok to say something, so Tarrlok just says, "Oh."

Ty Lee nods once at that.

Ty Lee then continues: "So we both sat down and we thought really hard, and I talked about all the other chi blocking sifus I knew because there aren't many. And I was like, 'hey, I probably didn't teach him!' because technically I only teach girls. I mean, I have taught two boys, Tang and Tian, but Tang does super secret things for the White Lotus while Tian kills people for money which I REALLY don't approve of but he's actually very sweet and also he's about five foot tall so we know he's definitely not Amon unless Amon had stilts hidden under his pants. Which might not actually be too crazy given that Amon wore a disguise anyway. But, even so, I'm sure Tian isn't Amon."

Tarrlok drinks his tea without tasting it.

Ty Lee waves a hand airily. "I mostly teach girls because, I mean, I don't have anything against boys but there are already plenty of people who teach fighting to boys - and even if the SAY they teach girls, their classes are usually more boys than girls - so I'd rather teach girls. I only really taught Tang and Tian because I owed a favor to Tang's mother and Tian was just, um, really good at chi blocking. And most boys are scared off by the pink uniforms anyway, but that's their problem."

Tarrlok watches her like a hawk.

"Anyway then I remembered that I _have_ taught four girls who were Northern Water Tribe and had nice square shoulders," Ty Lee says, "and I can tell you where three of them are right now except for one, Akina, who just kinda disappeared. She was always so quiet, but I know that a lot of traditional Northern Water Tribe girls are, and when I trained her, I just figured that she was running away from an arranged marriage or something because isn't that what your girls do or am I being racist?"

That is pretty racist, although Tarrlok is lost now.

"Anyway," Ty Lee says, "I just wanted to tell you that I _might_ have trained your brother but, if so, he - or she? I don't know, apparently he's a man these days - was a really good student and also everybody thought he was the prettiest young lady in his training group."

What?

Tarrlok pauses with his tea cup lifted halfway to his mouth, and says, " _What?_ "

"She was such a promising student," Ty Lee mutters. "So gloomy, though."

Tarrlok takes another sip of his tea. He reflects upon his circumstances. He tries to fathom why Korra would tell him to speak with this senile old woman. Korra is a nice girl, but she is very silly.

Tarrlok tries to decipher what Ty Lee has just told him. 

It takes him a moment. 

Then he inhales some of his tea and ends up coughing until his eyes water.

"You okay there?" Ty Lee asks.

No. Tarrlok is not okay. Tarrlok was foolish enough to believe that his life couldn't get any more convoluted and ridiculous, and once again, he has just been proved wrong.

Tarrlok tries to speak, but it comes out as a low growl. "Did you just try to tell me that my brother trained under you, _in drag_?"

Ty Lee scratches her chin thoughtfully. "You could say that."

Tarrlok considers yelling for the Avatar to come rescue him for this conversation.

"What's that supposed to... I... Listen, this is completely absurd," he says.

"Is it, though?" Ty Lee muses. "Wasn't your brother meant to be good at disguise?"

Tarrlok nearly tells her to shut up and get out, even though this is her house. "You can't make such stupid accusations without evidence."

Ty Lee raises her eyebrows as if to say 'wanna fucking bet, punk?', then reaches underneath the table and takes out a notebook. She flips through the book until she finds a square of paper, which she then passes over.

The square of paper is a very old photograph showing four teenage girls. The image is blurry, and the girls' stiff posture suggests that they've had to keep still for a very long time, so the camera must have been an early model.

One of the girls is a head taller than the others, and her expression suggests that she is about to punch someone, possibly the photographer. She bears an uncanny resemblance to Tarrlok's mother, as she has the same eyes.

The girl looks like she's about Korra's age. (Though it could be said that she has markedly better taste in dresses than the Avatar.)

"No. No," Tarrlok says. "That's not him."

Ty Lee says nothing.

"Shit," Tarrlok mutters. The girl in the picture has a glare he'd recognize anywhere. That glare could freeze a volcano.

Ty Lee eyes him.

"Please excuse my language," Tarrlok adds.

Ty Lee sips her tea.

Tarrlok props his elbows on the table and rests his chin on his hands. "I need a moment with... this," he says. "If this girl _is_ my brother, then I hope my father is spinning so fast in his grave that he strikes oil."

Ty Lee tilts her head to one side as if considering this, then nods knowingly.

"This is. Wow. You know." Tarrlok sits up and tries to scrape together some composure. "When I crossed paths with him in Republic City, I thought he'd endured some sort of.... dark and troubled past, yet if what you say is true, the bastard spent his teenage years _running around in a dress_."

"Plenty of people in dresses have dark and troubled pasts, sweetie," Ty Lee says, simply.

Tarrlok grasps for a coherent response. "So think you knew him?"

The old lady still watches him carefully. "For a little while, yes."

"This is insane," Tarrlok says, flatly.

"Why's that?"

"First I find out that my brother's a terrorist, then I find out he's a crossdresser. A crossdressing terrorist."

Ty Lee's eyes narrow. "Do you know how many stories there are about girls who disguise themselves as men so they can join the army or learn a certain fighting style? And yet, when a young man disguises himself as a woman in order to be trained by a particular sifu, you treat it as a _joke_?"

Ah. Tarrlok wishes he could yank his foot out of his mouth. He has a pretty big mouth, but it's an even bigger foot.

"Sorry," he says.

Ty Lee slurps her tea noisily.

Tarrlok places the photograph on the table and pushes it away from him. "Akina. Hah. I wonder how many fake names he's had since he ran away."

"Akina was a nicer person than Amon," Ty Lee says simply. "Do you want to keep the photograph?"

Tarrlok pauses for a second, then asks, "Has Korra seen it?"

"Yup," Ty Lee says. "She laughed for a few seconds, and then she just said, 'he's pretty' in the _angriest_ voice."

"He wasn't very pretty when I last saw him," Tarrlok says. He pushes the picture back towards Ty Lee.. "...And your offer is appreciated, but I think I'd prefer it if you kept the photo." Noatak looks too much like their mother for comfort. The resemblance was always there: they were both patient, and soft-spoken, and they were both liked by Tarrlok's father. They were good at playing musical instruments, and they were also very good at lying to themselves.

Ty Lee tucks the picture back between the pages of the notebook without comment.

"How long did you teach him for?" Tarrlok asks.

"Oh, she - or he - stayed here for about a year, and then she visited occasionally for about a year or so after that. She was a very fast learner."

Tarrlok almost corrects her pronoun usage, then decides that he can't be bothered.

"Small world, isn't it," Tarrlok mutters.

"Um. Maybe. I actually wonder if your brother sought me out because, a long time ago, I was kinda on a little team sent to capture the Avatar. You know, during the war. If you want to achieve a goal, you talk to someone who's already tried and failed so you can learn from their mistakes, right?"

Right.

Ty Lee continues, "Your brother _did_ try to sneakily ask me about my, um... my adventures a few times, but I always changed the topic." She pauses there, and apparently feels compelled to add, "I didn't give him any ideas."

Funnily enough, there is something small and petty in Tarrlok that makes him want to blame Ty Lee for the Equalists.

"Will you be assisting Katara with finding him?" Tarrlok asks. If he wanted to be irrational about things, he could argue that Ty Lee is partially culpable for the way that Noatak turned out.

"I guess so. And, ooh-" Ty Lee sits upright and smiles sheepishly. "I would like to fight an Equalist. To see if they're any good."

Tarrlok stares at her, then says, "Most of them couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag," just to ruin her hopes. 

"Aw, but some of them might have some raw talent, though."

 _That's nice_ , Tarrlok could say, _do you know what the Equalists did to me? They roughed me up and locked me in a cell, and I am reasonably certain that if my brother had not been present, they would have done much worse._

Ty Lee must notice something in his expression, because she her tone adopts a certain forced cheer as she says, "Anyway! I just thought you'd better see the photograph."

Tarrlok takes that as his cue to leave. "Thank you," he says, standing up. Then he hesitates, and feels obliged to add, "You must've been a good teacher to him. I'm glad someone looked after him for a time while he was on his own." Even though her efforts clearly didn't prevent Noatak from growing up to be a spiteful fuckwit.

Ty Lee looks sheepishly at her tea, and says, "I wouldn't mind talking to him again. Anyway. You should get out of this stuffy room and go back outside. Get yourself some fresh air."

Tarrlok grits his teeth at that comment, and heads out.

\--

When Tarrlok returns to the courtyard, Korra is still there, lying on the lawn and basking in the sun. 

Korra squints as Tarrlok's shadow falls over her.

"Did you speak to Ty Lee?" Korra asks.

"I did."

Korra props herself up on her elbows. "Did she show you the photograph?"

"Yes."

"What did you think?"

Tarrlok takes a deep breath. "I think I'm harboring some resentment over the fact that my father used to harass _me_ for being too effeminate when my brother was the one who ended up wearing skirts."

"So you think it was Noatak in the picture?" Korra says, sitting up properly now and crossing her legs.

"Yes. He looked a lot like my mother," Tarrlok says, then mutters, "Noatak inherited the _good_ nose."

Korra stares at him blankly.

"Maybe he went into terrorism because he could never make a career as a Dan performer because his voice was too deep," Tarrlok says, deadpan.

Korra keeps giving him that blank look.

Tarrlok remembers that they don't have opera in the South, and that Korra's people have to entertain themselves by holding ear-pulling matches and wrestling bear dogs.

"Anyway," Tarrlok says, and sits on the grass opposite the Avatar. "I didn't think my life could get any more implausible, but the universe continues to surprise me. Let's talk about something else. How's your training going?"

Korra is gracious enough to permit the change in topic. "Pretty good. It's fun. Kinda links to some of the stuff I already know about healing," she says, then offers a very tentative smile. "...Are you sure you don't want me to teach you chi blocking?"

Tarrlok stares at her. "You're going to keep nagging me about chi blocking until I say 'yes', aren't you?"

That makes Korra smirk. "Basically, yeah."

"Why?"

Korra sticks out her bottom lip in thought, then answers, "I just want to get better at teaching. I need the practice."

"You want to be a teacher?"

"Maybe."

"A chi blocking teacher?"

"No. I just want to be a better teacher in general," Korra says, then pauses and eyes him. "Why are you looking at me like that? I'd be a great teacher."

Tarrlok didn't know that he was looking at her like anything. "What would you teach?" he asks. He's not really heard of the Avatar ever teaching anyone before. If anything, people usually make a lot of noise about how things need to be taught _to_ the Avatar.

"I don't know," Korra says with a shrug. "Anything needed. It doesn't matter."

"Well, you could teach me something else, because I don't think I like chi blocking," Tarrlok says, as patiently as possible.

"Why?" says Korra. "It's not really an Equalist thing. It was around before they were. Just because some bad guys use something, it doesn't make it wrong."

Tarrlok takes a deep breath. "Let me put it this way: the effects of chi blocking are very similar to the effects of bloodbending. Chi blocking just requires the attacker to make physical contact, that's all."

"But if you hate something, then isn't that more reason to figure out how people do it?" Korra asks.

This line of reasoning seems familiar, somehow.

Tarrlok gives Korra a sideways look. She's watching him intently. In a situation different from this one, it might be flattering to have a pretty girl look at you in such a way.

With a healthy dose of caution, Tarrlok asks, "Alright. That's a fair point."

"And I've been bloodbent and I've been chi blocked," Korra says. "They feel pretty different."

"I'd prefer to take your word on that," Tarrlok says. He asks, only half-sarcastic: "If you try to teach me chi blocking, how do I know you won't use me as a punching bag?"

"Sheesh, you make me seem awful," Korra mutters, and then her bravado vanishes. "I... kind of want to prove that I'm not going to hurt you?"

"Oh."

Korra adds quickly, "And it'll be fun."

"Fine," Tarrlok says, without enthusiasm.

"I can give you a quick lesson now," Korra says, standing up. "You'll pick it up fast."

"Wait," Tarrlok says. "Would Katara approve of you teaching me?"

"Why wouldn't she?"

"The Grand Lotus has... understandable reasons for being reluctant to trust me," Tarrlok says. "I think you should run your idea past her first."

Korra just looks at him as if he's utterly incomprehensible. "What? Seriously? Now you're just trying to delay things."

"I'm not, I-"

"Look, if you think she'd have a problem with it, go ask her yourself."

This, of course, just makes Tarrlok feel incredibly petty. He has an awful vision of himself turning back towards the house and yelling, 'GRANDMA, KORRA'S INVITED ME TO GO CHI BLOCKING. IS THAT OKAY?' And he ends up wondering: is this what the rest of his life will be like? Will he have to request permission for everything he does? Because he could easily go insane living like that.

Still, he sets his shoulders,and says, "Very well, I will." He stands up and begins to walk away.

He barely takes four paces before he hears Korra mutter, "Very well, I will," in a snooty voice.

"What?" Tarrlok says, turning to look back at her.

Korra just holds up her hands.

Tarrlok stares at her for a good few seconds before going to find Katara.

\--

Katara is in their guest room, perched on the edge of a couch as she busily sorts through a small stack of papers. The papers look like telegrams.

"You look unusually sheepish," she says as Tarrlok loiters in the doorway.

Tarrlok has to ask, "Don't I always look sheepish these days?"

Katara surprises him by answering, "No. You usually look angry." Then she adds, "What's bothering you?"

Tarrlok straightens his shoulders, takes a step into the room, and says, "Korra wants to teach me chi blocking.

"She would," Katara says, unsurprised, "Do you..." But before she can finish that sentence, she actually bothers to look at him, and pauses.

Katara stares. It's the short hair, isn't it? She's staring at his hair.

"Goodness. I know I told you to sort your appearance out," she says, but... You don't do things by half-measures, do you?"

Tarrlok gives a small shrug. He's not here to talk about his appearance. Besides, Katara has no right to comment on anyone's hair. She was married to a bald guy for decades.

"Why did you cut it so short?" Katara asks. "It was fine as it was. It just needed some attention."

"I thought-" Tarrlok says.

"Didn't I say, specifically, that you just needed to tie it back and put some oil on it? Why did you have to go and hack it all off?"

"It was getting brittle in places and-"

"Cutting your hair short was completely unnecessary."

Tarrlok clears his throat, and says, "I didn't realize it would matter so much," which is a pile of disengenous crap. There are four key things that are highly prized in Water Tribe society, and they are: family, religion, food, and personal grooming (Tarrlok has only ever been able to summon enthusiasm for the latter two). "Anyway. As I was saying. Korra wants to teach me chi blocking."

Katara blinks once, then says, "And?"

"I thought I'd better let you know about it, in case you disapproved." Though it's not as if few chi blocking lessons are going to make Tarrlok any more dangerous than he is already. He won't be doing backflips and punching people in the spleen any time soon.

"Is that honestly what you were looking sheepish about?"

"...Yes?"

"Hmm," Katara says. She gives a curmudgeonly shrug. "Do you want her to teach you chi blocking?"

Tarrlok ventures further into the room so he can sit down on a cushion. "Not particularly. If teaching me chi blocking keeps her amused, then that's fine, but I can't see it being very useful for... Whatever it is that I'm meant to be doing these days." He pauses there. "By the way, you still haven't made it clear what your long-term plans are for me."

Katara gives him an icy look. "I told you. I need someone who can open jars and get things off high shelves."

Before Tarrlok can reply to that, Katara adds, "I think you should learn chi blocking."

Eeesh. "That's an order from the Grand Lotus, I take it."

"Yes."

"Any particular reason why?" Is she trying to humiliate him by forcing him to take lessons from someone half his age? 

"I'm not going to let you spend the rest of your life rotting away in some dark room like-" Katara begins, then abruptly changes tack. "Look. You have to make the best of things, and some exercise would be good for your health."

Tarrlok refrains from replying to that.

"Life goes on," Katara says. "Though you may wish otherwise."

Tarrlok is paralyzed by a sudden bout of anger for about a second, and then it passes, leaving him only mildly annoyed.

Katara returns her attention to the stack of telegrams in her hands, so if Tarrlok's face betrays his temper, then she doesn't notice it. "You'll be stuck here for a little while, so you might as well learn something in the meantime. I'll be gone from here by tomorrow morning, as I have some business elsewhere. You will remain under Ty Lee's supervision while I'm away. You're probably safer here than anywhere else."

Wait. She's leaving? Didn't she say that he was meant to be following her around? "Can I ask where you're going?"

"I'll tell you when I get back. I won't be gone long. I'm sure you'll stay out of trouble during my absence," Katara says, then mutters under breath, "Do _not_ test Ty Lee while I am away."

Tarrlok would like to tell her he's not that stupid, but technically he has been on the lam for the past few months. Not entirely by choice, but even so. She's right to have him marked as a potential problem.

Katara continues, "I'm sure you'll find ways to pass the time in my absence. Ty Lee probably has at least ten students boarding here at any given time. They get through a lot of food. The kitchen garden always needs help. Ask Ty Lee to introduce you to her housekeeper. She'll tell you what's needed."

Katara's last statement sounds like an order. "Alright," Tarrlok says, "I'll go do that now." It doesn't seem wise for him to remain in the vicinity of the Grand Lotus when he's in a foul mood. And besides, he needs to stay busy, if only so he doesn't end up dwelling on the nosedive that his life has taken. 

Perhaps his career as a gardener will go better than his career as a politician.

"Very good," Katara says, and goes back to her stack of telegrams.

As Tarrlok leaves the room, his mind lingers on something she said: 'I'm not going to let you spend the rest of your life rotting away in some dark room like-' But there is a time and a place to ask about such things, and this is not it.


	16. Summer, ASC 171

Tarrlok is directed to Ty Lee's housekeeper: a stocky little woman with an inscrutable expression. The housekeeper seems to assess Tarrlok with a glance, then gives him brief tour of the grounds while she lists all the things that need doing. The housekeeper does not ask him any awkward questions, the housekeeper does not stare at his damaged hand, and if the housekeeper knows his name, then she does not use it.

The household actually has two kitchen gardens, side by side: one that's well-maintained, and one that's gone to seed. Tarrlok is given the task of weeding the latter, probably with the reasoning that he can't ruin something that's already a mess. 

The housekeeper helpfully fetches him an assortment of tools. As soon as her back is turned, Tarrlok stares blankly at them.

Then he grits his teeth, and gets to work.

\--

Korra eventually comes to investigate Tarrlok's gardening efforts.

"Want some help?" Korra asks, while Tarrlok is leaning over so he can pull something squat and thorny out the ground.

Tarrlok could appreciate her company, but he knows what Korra is capable of. She could probably weed the entire garden in about a minute just by flexing her biceps at it. Tarrlok doesn't need to witness something like that.

"I'm good, thanks," Tarrlok tells her.

Korra wanders over to the adjacent garden that's already well-maintained and in use. She stomps the ground close to a row of vegetables, making a carrot right out of the earth and into her open hand. Then she draws all the dirt off with a motion that's commonly used for waterbending, and starts eating the thing.

"You might want to wash that," Tarrlok mutters.

"Eh, it's fine," Korra says.

"This garden is fertilized with sheep pig dung, you know," Tarrlok points out.

Korra stops chewing the carrot for a moment, but only for a moment. Then she says, "You're so prissy."

"Why? Because I think it's a good idea to wash animal feces off vegetables before I eat them?"

"I brushed all the dirt off, okay? A few germs aren't going to kill me," Korra huffs. She paces around a bit, then looks up at the sky. "Did Katara say it was okay for me to teach you chi blocking?"

"Yes," Tarrlok mutters.

"Wow. You could try to sound a little happier."

Tarrlok grunts.

Korra puts her fists on her hips as if she's trying to make herself look larger. "Look, I don't offer to teach stuff to _everyone_."

Tarrlok dusts off his hands, straightens up, and resigns himself to a few things. "Alright. What great insights can you share with me, sifu?"

Korra jabs her index finger at him. "You'll meet on me by the front gate before lunchtime tomorrow."

"Or else what?" Tarrlok says, because he can't help himself. Korra does sound like she's challenging him to a fight.

Korra has to pause and think about that. "Orrrr else... You'll have to spend the rest of your life regretting the fact that you could have had chi blocking lessons from a really awesome teacher but you let the opportunity pass you by because you wanted to be a grumpy dick instead."

"An awesome teacher," Tarrlok repeats.

That comment makes Korra glance away for a second, and then she gives a forced laugh. "I could be. One day. Have to start somewhere."

And, just for a moment, Tarrlok realizes how Korra has the rest of her life ahead of her. The realization brings a strange feeling. Like envy, maybe, but with a bit of vicarious happiness mixed in.

"Alright," Tarrlok says. "Tomorrow, by the front gate, before lunchtime."

Korra nods resolutely, then strides back towards the house, slapping him on the shoulder as she passes.

Tarrlok goes back to his weeding, and ignores the way that his shoulder smarts.

\--

Tarrlok tends to the garden until nightfall, when Korra appears and browbeats him into going indoors. Korra says it's late. It doesn't feel late. Tarrlok has to actually look at the moon to check its position. The moon is in its waning phase, which now feels exactly the same as its waxing phase: which is to say, it doesn't feel like anything whatsoever. 

Tarrlok avoids thinking about the moon, and reminds himself that at least the garden looks a lot better.

Somehow, he sleeps soundly.

\--

The next morning, Tarrlok resumes working after breakfast. Perhaps he was destined to be a gardener rather than a politician.

It's very nice, until someone ruins it.

He pauses to wipe the sweat from his brown when he hears someone say, "Good morning, repentant bloodbender." The voice is barely familiar. Tarrlok immediately turns around to face the speaker, half-ready for a fight. 

Ah.

The voice belongs to that leathery old woman who he's seen before, who appeared out of nowhere to heckle Katara a short while ago. She's standing there and looking at him with a smarmy expression.

What's her name? He's already forgotten. He'll just call her 'Grandma Lizard'.

Tarrlok could ask how she knows he's a bloodbender, but it's not a subject he cares to discuss. He's spent plenty of nights already lying awake wondering about how much of his life has become public knowledge. So he focuses on his breathing to steady his nerves, and gives the old woman the most indifferent look he can manage. "Can I help you?"

The old woman looks him up and down and says, "Definitely not."

Tarrlok refrains from telling her to fuck off back to whatever tomb she crawled from, and pointedly turns his back on her so he can resume weeding.

"Oh dear. They have you _gardening_ ," Grandma Lizard says. "Has anyone made you listen to trite metaphors about the cyclic nature of the seasons and the potential for regrowth yet? Summer and winter, darkness and light, and all that piffle?"

Tarrlok initially has no idea what she's blathering about, and then he remembers Katara's irritating little 'life goes on' comment. For some reason, he also thinks of the perfectly sculpted peach trees back at Katara's siheyuan

He does not look at the old woman, but he does deign to reply with, "No. Why?"

"Tsk. Don't be so defensive, boy. I'm just talking to you. I do talk to people occasionally." Grandma Lizard takes a few steps forward until she's back in his field of vision, then sits down on the paving stones at the edge of the garden plot. It doesn't look like she'll be going away any time soon. "Everyone here is so... so _perky_ all the time," she says. "It's a relief to sit in the presence of someone as miserable-looking as yourself. You're a refreshing patch of grey in a place awash with a color that I can only describe as 'yonic pink'." 

By 'here', Tarrlok assumes she means Ty Lee's compound. He hadn't thought of all the pink as being _yonic_ before, but good grief, now he won't be able to unsee it.

"Where's your Avatar gone?" Grandma Lizard asks. "She's usually babysitting you, isn't she?"

"I wouldn't know," Tarrlok says, though he's quite aware that Korra is off training at the moment.

"I see," says 'ol Lizardbritches. "Well, I don't suppose she'll be here much longer."

Tarrlok now bothers to face Grandma Lizard properly, and asks, "What makes you say that?"

"She'll be needed in the South, won't she? You people are having one of your little festivals or something," Grandma Lizard says. "The spirits are restless."

Right. There'll be the Glacier Spirits festival soon. Korra has mentioned it before.

Grandma Lizard gives him a look of fresh interest. "Hm. You must be familiar with Unalaq, surely?"

Not as _familiar_ as some of Tarrlok's detractors might claim, but... "Why are you asking?"

"What's your opinion of him?"

Subtlety clearly isn't her strong point. "That's a very strange question," Tarrlok says.

Grandma Lizard points a sharp index finger at him. "Because that was such a half-hearted answer, I am forced to conclude that you think he is a religious nutcase."

What is the point of this conversation? Who the hell is this woman and why is her presence being inflicted on Tarrlok? Hasn't he suffered enough? "Conclude what you like," Tarrlok says. "I don't see why my opinion matters by this point."

"I don't like Unalaq," Grandma Lizard announces, as if Tarrlok cares should care about her feelings. "Do you know what kind of people dabble in the spirit world? _Dysfunctional_ ones. People fiddle-faddle around with the spirit world whenever the physical plane isn't enough for them. And I don't doubt that this is actively encouraged. Spirits want easy prey."

Okay. Tarrlok just shrugs at her, and keeps weeding. The old woman isn't really telling him anything new. Every Water Tribe child grows up hearing about the dangers of spirits. If there are three things the North has in abundance, it's ice, and darkness, and cold-blooded things that are just waiting for someone lost and tired to come along.

Come to think of it, Unalaq did look very tired the last time Tarrlok saw him.

A bit of Tarrlok's old self wakes up and starts paying attention. He gives the old woman the scrutiny she deserves.

"Excuse me," he says, drawing himself up to his full height. He used to be imposing, once. "I don't believe we were properly introduced."

"I'm Cahaya," the old woman says. "I'm a... Well, I suppose I'm meant to be retired. These days I tell fortunes and possess too many opinions that absolutely _nobody_ is interested in hearing." She gives an indignant sniff. "Would you like me to tell you your fortune?"

"Would either of us learn anything new from it?" Tarrlok says. "You seem to know a lot about me already."

Cahaya smiles guilelessly, and states, "I enjoy showing off."

Tarrlok comes right out with it and says: "You're with the White Lotus, aren't you?"

The old woman only chortles at that.

"Why are you talking to me?" Tarrlok asks, suddenly irritated again.

"I'm incredibly nosy, and I like to know what everyone is up to at any given time, so that I can watch them from the peanut gallery and feel a bleak sense of satisfaction when they fail in their endeavors," Cahaya says. "Do relax, boy. I don't represent any sort of threat to you. If I _did_ , Katara would try to kill me, and she'd probably prolapse something from the effort, and _that_ would upset Ty Lee, and quite frankly I don't have the patience for that."

Tarrlok needs a moment to unpack the implications of what she's just said.

"And you can stop trying to look so tall," the old woman adds, "I'm not some hapless peasant who you can intimidate, although I'm sure the weeds find you very imposing. I think I saw a patch of innocent crabgrass over there that you could oppress. Councilman Tarrlok, tyrant of the vegetable plot."

Tarrlok can't think of a response to that which wouldn't sound childish.

"I will leave you alone now," the old woman says, with an airy wave of her hand. She begins to walk away. "As you were, bloodbender."

Tarrlok remains standing, gripping a trowel for dear life, even until she's no longer in his field of vision.

\--

Tarrlok spends the rest of the day fuming over his encounter with the old woman.

When he meets Korra for the chi blocking lesson - by the front gate, as advised - his first words to her are, "Who's the weird old Fire Nation lady?"

"Huh?" says Korra.

"The old lady. With the yellow eyes. Keeps snooping around this place."

"Ohhh," Korra says, leaning against a gate post, arms crossed. "You mean Cahaya?"

"Yes. Her."

"She's with Ty Lee." Korra pauses. "...I think."

"She's awful," Tarrlok states.

Korra grins. "Yeah, she kinda doesn't give a crap about what she says or who she says it to. She's funny."

"By 'funny', I think you mean 'rude'."

"Uh. You're gonna be like that when you're older," Korra says.

"Excuse me?" Tarrlok says, because apparently today is Everyone Gets To Be A Dick to Tarrlok Day.

"When I first met you, you were like..." Korra sweeps her hair back over her forehead, lifts her chin, and affects a deeper voice as her inflection becomes more stilted. "...'Oh hi Tenzin, I'm just going to invite myself into your dining room. Is that okay? No? Excellent. I don't care. I'm going to do it anyway. Because I'm Tarrlok. And I'm more important than you. So there.'"

"I had a busy schedule back then," Tarrlok says. "I had to get a meeting with you somehow."

"Right, buddy," Korra scoffs, leaning against a gate post.

"Also I don't sound like that."

Korra opens her mouth to argue, then pauses. "Actually, I guess you don't anymore," she says, although she doesn't make this sound like a _good_ thing. Korra speaks again before he can say anything: "Anyhow. Chi blocking. It's easy." She stands up straight and lets her arms fall down by their sides. "The first thing you need to figure out is the basic stance. You have to draw your legs together and do this with your heels."

As she speaks, she scoots her feet out in three neat movements but keeps her knees together, and bends her arms at a perfect ninety degree angle, fists turned outwards. It's not a good look. 

"I have never seen a chi blocker stand like that," Tarrlok says.

"Okay. Would you like me to go indoors and tell Ty Lee that you think her teachings are wrong?"

"That's alright."

"So, you gonna do the stance?" Korra asks.

Before answering that, Tarrlok casts a good look around to make sure there will be no witnesses.

"Just do the stance, Tarrlok," Korra says.

Tarrlok obliges.

"You need to bring your knees in more. Like, try to ground your weight through your calves."

"Like this?"

"Yeah. And, uh..." Korra puts one hand on the small of his back and another hand on his right shoulder so she can adjust his posture. "There."

"Be honest. How stupid do I look at the moment?" Tarrlok asks.

Korra looks him up and down. "You kinda look like a scarecrow that got hit by a truck."

"Marvellous."

"You'll pick it up quickly, though," Korra hastily adds. "You've barely started yet, but I know you'll be good at it."

That's very sweet of her to say so, and more than a little patronizing.

"Okay, so, the stances is important otherwise your footwork'll be messed up, and footwork is a huge thing, because you have to face your opponents at all times and out-maneuver them," Korra says. Because chi blocking only allows for close-range attacks, obviously. The thought of this leaves Tarrlok feeling, well, disabled, for want of a better word: the area within his punching and kicking range still so small compared to his reach as a waterbender.

He no longer has any way of sensing where his opponents are when they're out of sight, either. He'll be at a huge disadvantage in almost everything.

He then notices Korra giving him one of her odd looks. "You okay?" she asks.

"Fine," he says, and succeeds in keeping his voice neutral. "I know the style requires maneuverability, but I don't think I'll be cut out for any elaborate acrobatics."

"They're not required. You just need to... do what's most efficient, I guess." Korra shrugs. "Ty Lee's won't really teach me any of the acrobatic stuff anyway because she says my airbending training should cover it and we've not got enough time to go over everything as it is..."

That makes Tarrlok remember something. He relaxes from his stance. "Hang on. You know the weird old Fire Nation bag I mentioned?"

Korra looks like she's about to chide him for losing his stance, but she says, "Yeah?"

"She said you'd be going to the Glacier Spirits Festival soon-"

Korra cuts him off before he can say anything further, almost nervously. "Yeah. I have family I need to visit, so-"

"She mentioned that the spirits were restless," Tarrlok adds.

Korra doesn't seem to know how to respond to this. "Restless how?"

"I didn't ask."

 _That_ makes Korra pause. Then she admits: "Tenzin once said they've been kind of angry since the war. But you get times when they're more active than usual anyway. They're like weather. You get stormy periods and quiet periods."

Tarrlok says, "What would that old Fire Nation bag know about spirits?"

"She comes from a family that's just kind of, um, into that stuff," Korra says. Her tone remains amiable, but her reticence suggests that Tarrlok is asking questions above his pay grade, so to speak. She takes a few paces around him. "You need to relax your hips and bring them forward," she states. "And you've hunched your shoulders again, so..."

"Do you think you'll be away for the festival for very long?" Tarrlok says. He hasn't really considered the prospect of Korra's absence yet, but it would be... _unreasonable_ for him to have any strong feelings over it. He can't expect Korra to keep him company forever. Their lives will take very different paths. There would be no point in letting something like that bother him. No point whatsoever.

Korra only shrugs, and takes one of his wrists in a small, rough hand. She puts her other hand on his shoulder to make him straighten his back again. Tarrlok lets her reposition him as if he's a shop mannequin. Eventually she stands back and looks him up and down.

She cups her chin, and says 'hmm', uncharacteristically pensive. 

Tarrlok waits.

Korra doesn't meet his eyes, but continues to scrutinize his posture as she asks, "When I go away, will you miss me?" 

Her tone suggests she's trying to make the question sound like a joke.

Tarrlok refrains from answering, 'yes, because whenever I get close to someone, they always leave, probably because I'm demanding and unpleasant. Please take me with you, I won't say or do anything creepy or try to stab you again'. 

Tarrlok mimics her shrug. "Would it be alright if I wrote to you while you were away?"

She smiles at him. "Sure."

He'll probably be lucky if she replies to his letters. She's the Avatar. She'll be busy.

"So you think you can find Noatak before you leave for the festival, then?" Tarrlok asks, still holding the stance, feeling more scarecrow-like than ever.

"Yeah," Korra murmurs. Perhaps Tarrlok had too much doubt in his voice when he asked that question, because her smile now looks strained.

"I'm sure you're capable," Tarrlok says, trying a little too hard to make this statement sound sincere. It's a little too late for that, though.

"Yeah," Korra repeats, firmer this time. Then she takes a deep breath and says, " _Anyway_. Once I'm happy with your stance, I can take you through the hand forms. That'll take a while, since the first form has... I dunno, a hundred and something movements and _I_ still mess it up sometimes, but stop me if I do stuff too quickly..."

A hundred and something movements for just the first form. Right. Easy. Tarrlok resigns himself to looking like a fool, and tries to clear his mind so he can focus on Korra's instructions.

\--

The chi blocking lesson passes quickly, even though it lasts hours. Tarrlok feels uneasy when Korra starts to taper the lesson off. He suspects he's boring her. 

He makes excuse about sore joints so he can end the lesson before she can. Then he goes back to his gardening, and remains outdoors until, once again, Korra finds him again and orders him to get some rest.

As he follows her back to the house, he studies the set of her shoulders. There's a tension to her that wasn't present earlier on.

\--

Katara lets Tarrlok have the guest room to himself. She remains within the household, but Tarrlok has no idea when, if ever, she actually goes to bed.

\--

Tarrlok oversleeps a little, then drags himself outside so he can resume gardening.

As promised, Katara has left the household. Where? Who knows. That's her business.

Korra drops by occasionally between her lessons with Ty Lee. She brings him cups of water, then stands there and glares at him until he finishes drinking them

She subjects him to another chi blocking lesson in the afternoon, taking him through the first hand form again. He's surprised by how patient she can be. As the day passes, something _clicks_ into place in his mind, and he decides that he wants to be good at chi blocking, if only to make her happy.

"I _told_ you you'd pick this up really quickly," Korra says. She could stand to sound smug about this, yet she doesn't. If anything, her tone is a little pleading.

Tarrlok doesn't acknowledge the compliment, but concentrates on his transitions from one movement to another. He makes it easier for himself by thinking of the harder movements as ice and the softer movements as water, while the softest ones are fog. 

Sometimes his muscle memory makes him almost revert back to bending forms, although if Korra reads this in his technique, then she doesn't comment on it.

\--

Tarrlok stays up late to practice the basics of chi in the privacy of the guest room long after the rest of the household has gone to bed. 

When exhaustion compels him to stop, he sprawls onto the bed without changing his clothes first.

\--

Tarrlok wakes as he becomes aware that something is wrong.

He opens his eyes to find a figure in the doorway of his room. He tenses for a fight.

The figure is short and female, though. "Whoa there," Korra says, holding up her hands. "It's me. Just thought I'd check on you."

What? Why? And why is she waking him up like this? "Very well, but I clearly haven't tried to escape during the night," he says, which just makes him sound like a sulky teenager. He's too tired for effective sarcasm.

"C'mon, Tarrlok, no one thinks you'd do that," Korra says. She takes a few steps further into the room, even though she's wearing just an old vest and a pair of baggy pants. Tarrlok wants to shoo her away out of propriety, but her demeanour makes her look oddly vulnerable, and also he feels an instinctive urge to protect her. "I'm only checking on you because... Well, I just, I don't know..."

"What's wrong?" Tarrlok asks.

She looks back at the doorway, then gives a quick shrug. "You know how some nights, you just have a weird gut feeling about something and you want to stay alert?"

Tarrlok knows what she means. Back when he was in the police force, he definitely noticed that some nights felt more _wrong_ than others, and those were the nights when you had to keep your wits about you.

Then again, there have been times after stressful periods in his life where he's felt twitchy despite the absence of an actual threat. Instincts tend to err on the side of caution, and that means the occasional false alarm.

"We're safe here, though," Tarrlok says. "Aren't we?"

"Well. Yeah." Korra looks back over her shoulder again. "Ignore me. I'm just acting dumb. I'll go back to bed. Sorry for waking you up."

"That's fine," Tarrlok says, then thinks, _hang on a minute_. "...Although, is there anything you'd like to get off your chest?"

Korra gives him a look of scrutiny - it seems like her trust in him isn't a constant thing, and he respects her for this - then says, "Kind of. Maybe. It's just like... I feel like there's something I should know but I'm not seeing it."

Tarrlok rubs some grit out of his eyes, and says, "Sit down."

Korra sits on the floor next to his bed. Maybe she needs some reassurance, although Tarrlok isn't sure why she'd need it from him. Maybe it's because Katara isn't available at the moment.

"Usually, when I feel like I'm overlooking something important, I go to sleep on it," Tarrlok says, "and then a solution presents itself while I'm doing something the next morning." Usually while he's taking a crap or trimming his nose hair, but she doesn't need to know the specifics.

"Sleeping isn't helping," Korra grumbles. "Do you, uh... Do you remember when I told you I had a dream where something was chasing me?"

She sounds as if she doesn't expect him to remember, but he does. "Yes." 

"I keep having it."

"Oh."

Korra crosses her arms. "And, uh, you know how, well, you know, I said the dream wasn't that big a deal?"

"Yes?"

"Well, it's starting to kind of bother now," Korra says.

Tarrlok asks a stupid question: "Are you worried about something?"

"What, you mean _apart_ from finding Amon?"

"I mean, do you think the dream has anything to do with him?"

"I don't know. Maybe?" Korra holds her hands up in frustration. "He isn't in it, though. There's just me, and the thing chasing me, and... I guess there are two parts to the dream. One part where I'm walking through a place that looks like Republic City, and one part where I'm getting chased. The streets are different during that part."

"Have you tried meditating on it?"

Korra grumbles. "Katara and Ty Lee make me meditate all the time."

"I've never seen you do it," Tarrlok says.

"That's because I don't do it when you're around," Korra replies, then stares at him. "But maybe I should give meditating another shot. Maybe it'd be different with you here. You know, when you locked me in that box-"

Why does she have to mention that now? "I'm sorry about that, by the way. For the record, that box wasn't mine," Tarrlok says. "It belonged to my father. I don't want to know why he owned it-"

Korra interrupts him in return. "Why did you even _keep_ that box?"

"Because if I'd got rid of it, someone might ask why I was keeping a platinum strongbox large enough to contain a human being in the first place, and people used to speculate about me enougth already-"

"Speculate _about what_?" Korra says, then scowls. "Actually, _I don't want to know_. We're getting off the subject. Like I was saying, sometimes the stuff I see while meditating is more to do with time and place than anything else. And... You know what? I want to try something. Maybe if I went into the Avatar state, it'd help me figure things out."

"What, you want to go into the Avatar state right now?" Tarrlok asks.

"Yeah."

"Is it that easy?"

"Uh. Yes. Shouldn't it be?"

"I don't know. I have absolutely no idea how it works." Tarrlok has forgotten, if anything, his father told him about the Avatar state, other than maybe 'don't try to fucking fight the Avatar while he's in it, because you will get your shit pushed in,' or something equally emphatic.

"Well, I guess you'll see," Korra says. 

Korra then looks Tarrlok up and down. Tarrlok wants to recoil from her scrutiny.

"Judging by your fighting styles, you and Noatak were meant to work as a team, right?" she muses. "He covered close combat, you covered long-range and defense?"

Tarrlok racks his brain as he tries to remember if he's ever mentioned something like that to Korra. Not that he can recall. Has she just come to that conclusion by herself? "Er. Yes?"

Korra is silent in thought for a moment. Then she says, "I bet you're the short-tempered one who gets kind of emotional about things while Noatak's the quiet one who's really patient."

Tarrlok opens his mouth to say 'I'm not emotional, that's absurd', but then realizes that he's got too much self-awareness to say that out loud. "What's your point?" he asks peevishly.

"If things had worked out okay, maybe you two would've kept each other in check," Korra says.

Tarrlok snorts. He didn't do a particularly good job of keeping Noatak in check when he was younger. "You don't know that." 

"But it's weird how you both ended up in Republic City, isn't it?"

"It's a hell of a coincidence," Tarrlok admits.

"I'm the Avatar," Korra says. "I guess... coincidences don't exist to me."

Tarrlok is reminded of what she's meant to be: a fail-safe device that allows the universe to maintain an equilibrium. Where there is light there is dark, where there is action there is reaction, where there is life there is death, blah blah blah, Tarrlok probably read a cliche-riddled religious pamphlet on it some time. Spirituality has never been his forte, and when he was younger, he used to be horrified the implication that everything in the universe was somehow magically connected, as if there was meant to be a reason for every terrible thing that occurred in the world.

Tarrlok now wonders about a few things, such as the idea of destiny.

It certainly looks like destiny exists, even though Tarrlok's may be a particularly crappy one. 

"What are you trying to say?" Tarrlok asks.

Korra puts her hands over her face. "Augh. I don't know. I'm not good with this stuff," she says, which Tarrlok finds strange. She's not usually one to admit being bad at something. "I was just thinking that maybe I could use the Avatar state to find Noatak through you."

"How would that work?"

Korra gives an irritable shrug. "No idea. I feel like I'm... just kind of meant to know what to do in situations like this."

"Would any of your past lives be able to help you with..." Tarrlok gestures vaguely. "...Whatever it is that you're trying to do?"

Korra's expression darkens. "Maybe."

"Why don't you ask one of them?"

"It's not like dialling a phone, Tarrlok," Korra says flatly. "I can't just call one of them up and be like, 'oh hi Roku, do you know how to find someone's missing brother? Yes? Okay thanks.' Besides, they're past lives. From the past. So they can only see past things."

Well, that was certainly a lot more sarcasm than Tarrlok was expecting.

Just to be an ass, he says, "I thought the Avatar state was meant to be all-knowing."

Korra's expression says she knows he should shut up.

"Oh really, Korra," Tarrlok says. "You're the one who suggested using the Avatar state to try finding Noatak. You must've thought it was a good idea a moment ago. But now it seems to me like you've just talked yourself out of it."

Korra doesn't reply.

Tarrlok waves his hand in a dainty little gesture that's intended to annoy. "Look, you managed to figure out my spectacularly miserable parentage after I had a nervous breakdown and locked you in a box. I don't know what else you're capable of. If you think you could find Noatak through me because I'm linked to him by, _I don't know_ , some sort of dysfunctional fraternal equivalent of the Red String of Fate, then you probably _could_ do that. Who am I to say what you can and can't do? You're the Avatar. The only thing holding you back is your lack of self-confidence, which is entirely unwarranted, because you're supposed to be the most powerful entity in the world." 

Korra gives him a hard stare.

Then she grumbles, "Okay, _fine_."

And that's that.

Korra fidgets, uncrossing and recrossing her legs, then slowly exhales.

She closes her eyes. 

She scowls for a few minutes, and then her brow smoothes out as she relaxes.

Tarrlok waits. He assumes she knows what she's doing.

A sense of serenity settles over Korra and, for the first time ever, Tarrlok actually gets the feeling that he's in the presence of a major spiritual figure. She reminds him of Unalaq - maybe there's a family resemblance there - although she lacks Unalaq's air of _remoteness_ , probably because she isn't an unsociable fartbag like he is. If someone carved a temple statue of Korra right now, it would turn out quite well. She's still frowning (and though she looks harmless now, Tarrlok realizes that she'll probably mature into an Avatar with a reputation for ferocity), but it's a quite a different frown to her usual glower. 

If someone carved a temple statue of Korra in her current pose, it would probably turn out quite well.

She is very, very beautiful. Tarrlok wants to inch back from her but doesn't dare move.

And, as Tarrlok is trying to convince himself that he probably shouldn't stare at her, her eyes open.

Tarrlok almost says, 'Well?' but doesn't quite manage it.

Everyone knows that the Avatar's eyes glow. What most people don't know is that they glow like the eyes of some animal glimpsed in the dark, reflecting back light from an unseen source. There isn't a human intelligence behind them. They're not the kind of eyes you want to see up close.

The eyes narrow slightly. The Avatar studies Tarrlok.

Tarrlok gets the distinct impression that she knows things about him that Korra isn't normally aware of. He can't tell if she's judging him for them.

Then her left hand reaches for Tarrlok's arm, and she yanks him forwards.

Her right hands move to his forehead.

Tarrlok would not like to think of himself as being the sort of man who screams easily, but he does make a noise. The noise is not loud, nor is it particularly high-pitched and undignified, but he makes a noise all the same.

Then it's over. She takes her hand away.

The Avatar relaxes her grip, and Korra blinks a few times as if waking up. Her eyes - back to normal now - focus on him, and then she demands, "What's wrong?"

Tarrlok needs a moment.

"What's wrong?" Korra repeats, louder now.

Tarrlok collects himself, and says, very evenly, "You grabbed me."

"I thought something had hurt you!" Korra says, back to her old self. She stares at her hand still around his wrist, then lets go.

"What just happened?" Tarrlok asks, still enunciating every word perfectly in order to maintain a vestige of self-control.

Korra looks down at her hands. "You yelled 'sorry' at me."

"No I didn't."

"You did," Korra says. "About five seconds ago, you definitely yelled 'sorry'."

Alright, that could have possibly happened when Tarrlok made a startled noise a moment ago. It's within the realm of plausibility.

"You scared the shit out of me," Tarrlok snaps.

"Are you alright?"

"No."

Korra gives him a long look. Then she says, "How about I get you some chamomile tea?"

"I don't want chamomile tea."

"Okay."

"What did you see?" 

Korra lowers her gaze, and rubs her brow. "Alright. Let me try to put it into words. So, I saw you, and-"

Tarrlok remembers the way that the Avatar looked at him. It was like she could see his soul and, metaphorically speaking, his soul was buck naked and standing under unflattering lighting. "How much of me?"

"I don't know," Korra blinks, caught off-guard by the question. "What do you mean?"

"Never mind."

Korra gives him yet another odd look. "Anyway, I saw you. And I saw Notak as he was when you were last with him." She pauses there, and her voice becomes quieter, "I don't think that guy is going to create trouble for anyone anymore. Not on purpose."

"Perhaps not."

"You were the last person in the world who'd have any understanding of him," Korra says slowly, "And you thought he had to die."

Tarrlok won't contest that.

"And you only failed to kill him because he wanted you to live," Korra adds, as if the implications of this have only just dawned on her.

Korra watches him as if she's expecting him to speak, but he remains quiet, offering nothing.

"So, I saw Noatak," Korra says, no longer meeting Tarrlok's gaze. "And after he left you, I tried following him for a while, I guess, which wasn't easy. I got lost."

"Lost?"

"Hey, _like I just said_ , this stuff is hard," Korra mutters. "Everything got kind of foggy, and... Anyway, I tried concentrating on how bad I wanted to find him. I thought about all the other people who'd want to find him as well, because he lied about so many things. And I saw the South Pole, and I remembered about the spirits being restless, but..." She shrugs. "But I doubt they'd be restless because of him. But. I don't know. And... I heard you shout. And that was it." She slumps a little. "I'm sorry. I didn't figure out where he is."

Well, that's no great disappointment. Tarrlok wasn't expecting too much.

"Never mind. I'm sure you'll get better at this sort of thing with practice," Tarrlok says. He almost tells her that perhaps it's worth giving things another shot, but he doesn't want to revisit whatever it was that just happened.

Korra murmurs, almost to herself, "I'm sorry. I really, really need to find him. Katara says she's investigating a lead and she's told me to stay here in the meantime, but... I still don't feel like I'm doing enough."

Tarrlok mulls over what she's just said. "You mentioned spirits. What if you asked the spirits where he was?"

Korra gives the idea some consideration, then admits. "I've, uh, never spoken to one before. I don't think I'm meant to."

"When have you ever done what you were _meant_ to do?"

"No, I mean, I'm supposed to complete my airbending training before I deal with spirit stuff. What if I tried to talk to one and just made it angry?"

The girl has a point. She's awful at diplomacy.

"Alright. How about this: if you found a spirit," Tarrlok says, "I could talk to it."

" _You?_ "

"It can't be worse than talking to politicians."

"We could call Tenzin and ask him to talk to a spirit, maybe," Korra says.

"What, you've come all this way just to end up asking for Tenzin's help?" Tarrlok says, even though he knows he's being petty. "Maybe you should've stayed in Republic City if your solution to a temporary setback involves asking _Tenzin_ to do your work for you."

That comment must have sounded a little too scathing, because Korra now looks at Tarrlok as if she'd like to take another shot at setting him on fire.

"I suppose you _could_ ask Tenzin," Tarrlok admits, very quietly.

Now, at this point, Korra could say something to the effect of, 'yes, Tenzin is best qualified to help with spirit matters', or 'I'm sure Tenzin would do anything to help us find a man who threatened the safety of his family'. This would be reasonable.

But instead, Korra mutters, "No. Tenzin has enough stuff to worry about right now. I don't know. I need to think on it."

"I understand," Tarrlok says.

"I'm really meant to master airbending before I can worry about spirit stuff," Korra says, and sighs. "Look, I'm going back to bed. Maybe I'll come up with a good idea in the morning."

Tarrlok nods, although he isn't about to drop the idea of asking the spirits for information just yet. "Before you go, I have a quick question: does this place have a temple nearby?"

Korra stands up, and peers down at him. "What, like a proper Water Tribe one?"

"I suppose. Or something similar."

"I don't know. I could ask around. Why?"

"I thought I might try praying," Tarrlok says.

Korra keeps peering at him, then just replies, "Huh. There's nothing to say that you, uh... couldn't do that."

Tarrlok smirks at her. "Good night, Korra."

Korra takes that as her cue to leave, and murmurs something in reply before heading out the door.

Tarrlok lies back down in bed, and decides that he never wants to see the Avatar state up close ever again.

\--

Tarrlok doesn't sleep.

He remembers how his mother used to give offerings to the spirits, in the hope that they would help Noatak to return to his family.

And Noatak did return, in the end.


End file.
